Document `--from` / `--to` feature

[jasalt]

Hi, I noted the --help (and readme) does not mention this recent useful addition from:

• Filter from/to class #89
• feat: Filter relations from and to class #90

[smeghead]

@jasalt
Thank you for pointing that out!

At the beginning of the pull request, the option names were --from / --to. However, the option names have since been updated to something more descriptive: --rel-target-from and --rel-target-to.

#90 (comment)

We are aware that the description of the changed options is fine, as they are described in the README and --help.

[jasalt]

@smeghead A-ha, I missed that and thought --rel-target flags in help was slightly different (guessing other commanding what arrows to draw and other which modules to show in picture). I think I understand that now better, the --rel-target-depth is intuitive.

I did get usable results but didn't fully understand the filtering features yet when making output from Phel sources. As the picture gets quite large (had to increase -DPLANTUML_LIMIT_SIZE=1819200 Plantuml parameter) , I tried to also only draw modules that are connected to e.g. Phel\Compiler\Domain\Analyzer\Environment\GlobalEnvironment. Using --rel-target-from seems to leave non-connected modules to the picture:

Full:

Wondering if there is method to leave those disconnected modules/classes out with some rule. I might like to leave disconnected items inside Compiler or Analyzer, but discard ones outside of those. I only tried plantuml from command line, so maybe a GUI editor could help some too for "post-processing" to get the best output.

[smeghead]

@jasalt

The ability to exclude unlinked classes when rel-target is specified is achieved by relying on a PlantUML feature (remove @unlinked).

I also tried generating a similar graph, but unlinked classes were not displayed.

The commands I used are as follows

$ php-class-diagram --rel-target=GlobalEnvironment src/ | plantuml -pipe -tsvg > GlobalEnvironment.svg

[jasalt]

@smeghead thank you, I understand the flags and behavior better now.

I was getting slightly different behavior still but I think it was because of Debian has older PlantUML that did not necessarily follow all the directives in .puml file. Reproduction worked with the docker-php-class-diagram container image and command run in phel-lang repo root:

docker run --rm \
        -v $(pwd):/usr/src \
        -w /usr/src \
        smeghead7/php-class-diagram bash \
        -c 'php-class-diagram --rel-target=GlobalEnvironment src/ | plantuml -charset utf-8 -pipe -tpng > GlobalEnvironment.png'

Version difference:
plantuml -v

• Debian 12: PlantUML Version 1.2020.02
• Container: PlantUML Version 1.2024.8

[smeghead]

@jasalt
The rel-target option does not work with PlantUML before the remove @unlinked feature was added.
Please use newer versions of PlantUML, especially if you want to use the rel-target feature.

In addition, if the output image is large, you can output the entire image by using the SVG output format.

[jasalt]

Works fine with these considerations, thank's.