Generate graphs from your configuration

Last update: May 7, 2021

The krakend.json file whether it is a single file or the result of using the flexible configuration, it might be a complex file. A generated image of the configuration might help you understand better the running configuration.

The config2dot generator will generate internally an intermediate DOT dile that you can render into a png image with GraphViz or similar software.

The following image illustrates an example of a KrakenD configuration:

Generating the Config2dot

The command needed to generate a DOT file is krakend generate config2dot:

$krakend generate config2dot -h

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▐██████▌   ▐███⌐  ,▄████████M║██████▄  ║██████████M███▌   ███H ███     ,███
▐███╨▀███µ ▐███   ███▌  ,███M║███╙▀███  ███▄```▄▄` ███▌   ███H ███,,,╓▄███▀
▐███  ╙███▄▐███   ╙█████████M║██▌  ╙███▄`▀███████╨ ███▌   ███H █████████▀
                     ``                     `'`

Version: 2.3.1

Generates a DOT graph from your KrakenD configuration.
Usage:
  krakend generate config2dot [flags]
Examples:
krakend generate config2dot -c config.json -o config.dot
Flags:
  -h, --help   help for config2dot
Global Flags:
  -c, --config string   Path to the configuration filename
  -d, --debug           Enable the debug
  -o, --out string      Path to the generated result.")

Generating the image

Once you have generated the dot file, you get a plain text content that is ready to be rendered by any software library that is capable of processing dot files. A good of example is Graphviz.

You can install Graphviz on Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) with the following command, but other distributions are similar:

$sudo apt-get install graphviz

On Mac:

$brew install graphviz

Or you can also add Graphviz to the official Enterprise Docker image (gets heavier):

RUN apk update
RUN apk add graphviz

Then you can generate the image with the following command:

$dot -Tpng graph.dot -o graph.png