I'm nearing the end of my internship this summer, and I've developed a tool for my mentors that involves primarily PHP, MySQL, JavaScript (jQuery). Does anyone have any templates or suggestions or links on creating an easy to read document showing the code structure of the program and the relationships between the files?

These guys are programmers, but have not had much experience in any of the languages above, so I'd like it to be relatively simple.

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Edit:

Seems like some type of flowcharting is the way to go (which makes sense). Do you start with every class file on a page? Or do you start one by one, and figure out every detail and branch out, rearranging it as it gets more plicated.

I'm nearing the end of my internship this summer, and I've developed a tool for my mentors that involves primarily PHP, MySQL, JavaScript (jQuery). Does anyone have any templates or suggestions or links on creating an easy to read document showing the code structure of the program and the relationships between the files?

These guys are programmers, but have not had much experience in any of the languages above, so I'd like it to be relatively simple.

---

Edit:

Seems like some type of flowcharting is the way to go (which makes sense). Do you start with every class file on a page? Or do you start one by one, and figure out every detail and branch out, rearranging it as it gets more plicated.

• php
• javascript
• mysql
• structure

Share Improve this question Follow edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12 CommunityBot 111 silver badge asked Aug 17, 2009 at 0:50 DirkDirk 6,9041414 gold badges5757 silver badges7474 bronze badges

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7 Answers 7

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Mind Mapping might be of some help here, there are some free tools that I can remend, like FreeMind or XMind or iMindq

Search for any free UML tools, or if you have access to Microsoft Visio use it to create UML diagrams.

I'd start by describing what the software does (functional specification), and how to build, run, and test it: How does a good developer keep from creating code with a low bus hit factor?

After you've done that, you can add pointers from your functional spec into the source code, to identify which bits of source code help to implement which bits of functionality.

[When I say 'pointers', I mean that in a section which identifies/describes some functionality, add the URLs and/or names of the corresponding source code.]

I remend using OmniGraffle. It's an OS X application, but it's phenominal.

http://www.omnigroup./applications/OmniGraffle/

You might check out Doxygen, which does mark up PHP documentation. If dot is available, Doxygen can automatically generate dependency graphs for files, call graphs for functions, and ancestry graphs for classes as well.

But, Doxygen doesn't have any exact support for documenting MySQL source. It appears that there is some popular perl script for documenting Javascript code, though.

You might be interested in seeing some sample Doxygen-generated documentation as well.

I've done this for a lot of my projects. In fact, now when I start work on an existing one I've learned to make some sort of flow chart for my own reference, and then check it into the repository.

I prefer a flowchart type of diagram (maybe in addition to what you have in mind). I just use Open Office and draw circles, rectangles, triangles, etc., for the various pieces & decisions. If you make one and then copy it, changing the text as needed, it's not too time-consuming. Same with the arrows, just make a lot of them then move them around where you want.

I've tried looking for a tool that does this but if it's significantly easier to use than OO it tends to be buggy and crash. If it's stable, it's not any been any faster and maybe didn't have even as many drawing options as OO does.

I used free PlantUML tool this tool also have a plug-in for eclipse along with several other plug-ins. interesting this regarding about this tool is that you have to write a textual script to produce the diagram which has many advantages along with some disadvantages. e.g. easy copy pasting of part of UML diagrams and modifying diagrams quickly, integrated it with mediawiki etc.

Some examples

@startuml
Alice -> Bob: Authentication Request
Bob --> Alice: Authentication Response

Alice -> Bob: Another authentication Request
Alice <-- Bob: another authentication Response
@enduml

AND

@startuml
actor Foo1
boundary Foo2
control Foo3
entity Foo4
database Foo5
Foo1 -> Foo2 : To boundary
Foo1 -> Foo3 : To control
Foo1 -> Foo4 : To entity
Foo1 -> Foo5 : To database
@enduml

AND

@startuml

User -> (Start)
User --> (Use the application) : A small label

:Main Admin: ---> (Use the application) : This is\nyet another\nlabel

@enduml

AND

@startuml

[*] --> State1
State1 --> [*]
State1 : this is a string
State1 : this is another string

State1 -> State2
State2 --> [*]

@enduml

@startuml

object user {
  name = "Dummy"
  id = 123
}

@enduml

All of example taken from PlantUML official website