Usage Guide

Once installed and configured in your schema.prisma, the ERD generator integrates seamlessly into your standard Prisma workflow.

Generating Diagrams

Every time you run the standard Prisma generate command, the diagram will be updated:

npx prisma generate

This is particularly useful in development environments where schema changes happen frequently.

Disabling Generation

You might not always want to generate an ERD, especially in production environments or specific CI/CD steps (like Docker builds) to save time and reduce image size (avoiding Puppeteer dependencies).

Via Environment Variable

You can disable the generator dynamically by setting the DISABLE_ERD environment variable:

DISABLE_ERD=true npx prisma generate

Via Configuration

You can also hardcode the disable state in your schema (though environment variables are usually preferred for conditional execution):

generator erd {
  provider = "prisma-erd-generator"
  disabled = true
}

Via Dockerfile Optimization

If you want to completely remove the generator dependency inside a Docker build to save space, you can use sed to remove the generator block from your schema before generation:

# Deletes lines 5-9 from prisma/schema.prisma (adjust line numbers as needed)
RUN sed -i '5,9d' prisma/schema.prisma
RUN npx prisma generate

Debugging

If the diagram isn't being generated as expected, you can enable debug mode. This will output detailed logs and create intermediate files (like the raw mermaid definition) in a prisma/debug directory.

Via Environment Variable:

ERD_DEBUG=true npx prisma generate

Via Config:

generator erd {
  provider = "prisma-erd-generator"
  erdDebug = true
}