Model Schema Graph

Schema Graph

EduLite includes django-schema-graph as a development tool for visualizing how our models connect. It serves an interactive diagram at /schema/ that reads directly from your models — so it's always up to date.

Quick Start

Once the backend is running locally, browse to:

http://localhost:8000/schema/

That's it. You'll see a graph of every model in the project with lines showing their relationships.

What You're Looking At

The diagram shows all Django models across all installed apps. Each node is a model, each edge is a relationship (ForeignKey, OneToOne, ManyToMany, or GenericForeignKey).

The sidebar on the left lets you:

• Toggle apps on/off — useful for focusing on just the apps relevant to what you're building.
• Toggle individual models — hide noise, zoom into what matters.
• Toggle relationship types — show only ForeignKeys, or only ManyToMany, etc.

Proxy models appear with a white background to distinguish them from concrete models.

When To Use It

• You're new to the project — browse /schema/ before reading any code. It'll give you the big picture in 30 seconds.
• You're designing a new feature — toggle on the apps you're touching to see existing relationships before adding new ones.
• You're reviewing a PR that adds or changes models — check the diagram before and after to see what changed visually.
• You're writing serializers — quickly see which related models you might need to include via select_related or prefetch_related.

Key Relationships to Explore

Some non-obvious connections in the EduLite data layer:

• CourseModule uses a GenericForeignKey — it can point to a Slideshow, a Note, or any future content type without tight coupling.
• CourseMembership is the join table between User and Course, carrying role (teacher/student/assistant) and status (pending/enrolled/invited).
• CourseChatRoom links a Course to a ChatRoom, meaning chat functionality is connected to but not embedded in the courses app.

Toggle on courses, slideshows, chat, and users simultaneously to see this full picture.

Access Control

The schema view is only accessible when DEBUG=True, which means it's available in local development but not in production. This is the default behavior from django-schema-graph — no additional configuration needed.

If you need to customize access (e.g. allow it in a staging environment), you can subclass the view and override access_permitted:

from schema_graph.views import Schema

class CustomSchemaView(Schema):
    def access_permitted(self):
        return self.request.user.is_staff

Troubleshooting

Page is blank or 403: Make sure DEBUG=True in your settings. The schema view is hidden in production by default.

Models are missing: The diagram reads from INSTALLED_APPS. If an app isn't installed, its models won't appear.

Too many Django internals showing: Use the sidebar to toggle off auth, contenttypes, sessions, admin, etc. and focus on EduLite's own apps.