🍝 Spaghetti - Low Calorie Documentation Tool

Automate explaining your code to AI (and maybe humans).

Creating documentation is such a joyride. Especially when you need to keep your documentation up-to-date with the latest code or database schema, perhaps to feed an AI model or to ensure that your team always has access to the most accurate information.

There's nothing quite like manually copying and pasting code snippets to really brighten your day.

Because let's face it, who doesn't love the relaxing experience of executing SHOW CREATE TABLE user and then transferring the result to a doc file every time you need an updated document? After all, what could be more calming than mindlessly copying and pasting for hours on end.

Oh, and you also proably believe you will never again create a spaghetti code in your live.

We are here to ruin all the fun :)

Spaghetti is a tool designed to simplify the creation of project documentation, especially useful for generating structured content for AI review (prompts). It works by authoring Markdown files enriched with dynamic content generated by PHP, automating repetitive tasks such as inserting database information.

Unlike full-scale documentation tools like phpDocumentor or Sphinx which focus on entire projects, Spaghetti is designed for narrower, context-specific tasks. You can easily combine your own explanations with dynamically generated content such as:

• Database table schemas
• Code snippets from specific files
• Directory structures

Example Usage

Create a file like about-pet-project.spaghetti.php:

# Pet Adoption Project

Example description: This is a simple project for managing a pet adoption database. It includes tables for storing information about pets, their sweetness level (subjective but fun!), and more.

Now create your main file, index.spaghetti.php:

<?= $spaghetti->import('about-pet-project.spaghetti.php') ?>

The most important table in this project is pet. Here's its structure:

<?= $spaghetti->db->showTable('pet') ?>

It’s related to the sweetness table, which evaluates how adorable each pet is:

<?= $spaghetti->db->showTable('sweetness') ?>

Each pet is represented by the Pet entity:

<?= $spaghetti->file('src/Entity/Pet.php') ?>

Finally, build the documentation using Spaghetti:

spaghetti index.spaghetti.php > index.md

This will generate a Markdown file (index.md) with all your descriptions, database schemas, and entity code snippets combined.

Alternatively, you can pass it directly to another application, such as an AI model

ollama run llama3.2 "Could you please review my project?\
I’m looking for feedback on\
the code quality, suggestions for improvements,\
and insights on whether the design patterns used\
are appropriate.\
Here are the details: $(spaghetti prompts/index.spaghetti.php)"

This way, you can start your day with a cup of coffee and a single command, spaghetti ensures the information returned is up-to-date :)

Example output

The above example will result in a markdown file similar to this:

# Pet Adoption Project

This is a simple project for managing a pet adoption (...)

The most important table in this project is pet. Here's its structure:

Column	Type	Description
id	int	Primary key
name	varchar	Name of the pet
...	...	...

It’s related to the sweetness table, which evaluates how adorable each pet is:

Column	Type	Description
id	int	Primary key
pet_id	int	Foreign key referencing pet
level	int	Sweetness level of the pet
...	...	...

Each pet is represented by the Pet entity:

class Pet {
    private $id;
    private $name;
    // ...
}

...End of example output

Installation

Note

Installing Spaghetti as a regular Composer dependency is not recommended. Spaghetti is a tool, not a library. As such, it should be installed as a standalone package, so that Spaghetti's dependencies do not interfere with your project's dependencies.

Install globally with Composer:

composer global require kpion/spaghetti

Make sure your global Composer binaries directory* is in your system's PATH. Because lost spaghetti is sad spaghetti.

* Usually, on Ubuntu, Composer binaries are located either in ~/.config/composer/vendor/bin/ or ~/.composer/vendor/bin/.

Details

Including Other Spaghetti files

Easily include and parse contents of other spaghetti files.

<?= $spaghetti->import('other-document.spaghetti.php'); ?>

Including External Files (source files)

Easily include contents of external files to keep your documentation updated without manual copy-pasting. For example:

<?= $spaghetti->file('src/Entity/User.php'); ?>

This includes the contents of User.php directly in the Markdown output.

Database Table Structure Example

You can use showCreateTable to generate a Markdown-friendly representation of your table’s SQL schema:

<?= $spaghetti->showCreateTable('example_table'); ?>

Assuming example_table is defined in your database, the output might look like this:

CREATE TABLE `example_table` (
  `id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `name` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `created_at` TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4;

Available Functions

Here are some of the core functions available in Spaghetti for generating documentation content:

• Other spaghetti (or just plain) file Inclusion: $spaghetti->import('introduction.spaghetti.php') - Includes the contents of the specified spaghetti file (which will be parsed by spaghetti). Relative to the parent directory of the main file.

• File Inclusion: $spaghetti->file('src/Entity/User.php') - Includes the contents of the specified snippet file (which will not be parsed by spaghetti, it will be just inserted as it is). Relative to the project directory (current working directory).

• Directory Structure: $spaghetti->dir($directory, $depth = 2, $exclude = ['.git', 'vendor']) - Shows a tree-like structure of directories with optional depth and exclusion parameters. Relative to the project directory (current working directory)

• SQL Table Schema: $spaghetti->db->table($tableName) - Shows the details of specified table (e.g. SHOW CREATE TABLE statement, as well as a few first records)

• Table Indexes: $spaghetti->db->indexes($tableName) - Lists all indexes of the specified table in Markdown format.

• SQL Query Execution: $spaghetti->db->sql($query, $valueLengthLimit = 1000) - Executes an SQL query and returns results as a Markdown table.

Why the Name "Spaghetti"?

While "spaghetti code" (mixing logic and presentation) is a horrible and evil practice in 99% of cases, it's actually a perfectly reasonable approach for this project's input files (documentation source files).

Plus, I absolutely love spaghetti in all its forms (the food, of course!). Buon appetito 🍝!

Contributing

This project was built with collaboration and feedback from the community. Contributions, suggestions, and improvements are always welcome!