Graffiti

Create customized callgraph directly from your favorite editor.

Features

• Add a node to the callgraph directly from your editor.
• You choose what to add and where.
• Open the selected node in the editor using right click.
• Add text nodes, and comments
• Export the graph to mermaid, svg or png
• The graph support scrolling and zooming
• Auto save to localstorage, can export to file.
• Multiple tabs
• Rename in the editor? the change will propagate to the graph.

Setup

The setup consits of three components: server, backend and frontend. See Architecture section for more info.

Frontend

you can use graffiti.quest. It serves the latest version of the web frontend.
You can also self-host it by serving the frontend statically:

cd frontend/Web
python3 -m http.server 80

Server

The server can run it two modes:

• Single user mode - for local user.
• Multi user mode - for domains or multiple users on the same server.

To run the server, first install the single dependency - websockets library:

pip3 install websockets==10.3

Then, just run python3 server.py. If you want to use multi-user mode, add the --multi-user-mode flag.

Note: if you want to run the unpacked version from source, run python3 -m server.graffiti.

Backend

Graffiti supports multiple backends, as can be seen here. Open the frontend on your browser and press "shift+?". It will show installation and usage instruction for each supported backend.

Backends

Editor	Languages	add to graph	open in editor	Rename support	Field support	Add line to graph	Add xrefs	Socket type
JEB	Java	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	TCP
Intellij	Java, Kotlin	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	TCP
CLion	C, C++	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	TCP
VSCode	Depends on available language server	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌	TCP
IDA	*	✅	✅	✅	-	✅	✅	TCP
Ghidra	*	✅	✅	✅	-	✅	❌	TCP
Jadx	Java	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	TCP
OpenGrok	* if indexed, Java, C, C++ otherwise	✅	✅	-	❌	✅	❌	Websocket
Sourcegraph	Java, C, C++	✅	✅	-	❌	✅	❌	Websocket
Github	Java, C, C++	✅	✅	-	❌	✅	❌	Websocket
Gitlab	Java, C, C++	✅	✅	-	❌	✅	❌	Websocket

The common shortcuts are:

• Ctrl+Shift+A - Add a new node to the graph.
• Ctrl+Shift+X - Add a new node to the graph with a custom text on the edge.

Your cursor should be inside the function (or field in supported platforms) you want to add to the graph.

You can build all the backends using make, or build specific backend by running its own task.

Check here for instructions for using graffiti on each supported platform

Architecture

Graffiti was built with the following assumptions:

• You might use more than a single editor for a project.
• You might want to run everything locally.
• It should be easy to use.

Graffiti consists of 3 separate components

• Backend - the editor used to browse code. The editor might be native, therefore supporting TCP sockets. However, some editors are inside a browser (for example: OpenGrok). Chrome doesn't support TCP Sockets, so Backend should be able to communicate with WebSocket as well. Backend should implement the following functionality:
  • Add to graph - Send the current focused symbol.
  • Pull - Get a symbol's address from the socket and open it in the editor
  • (Optional) Rename - detect rename in the editor and notify the socket.
• Frontend - Shows the call graph and allow you to interact with it. Should support:
  • Layout the nodes
  • Navigating the graph
  • Import and export graph
  • Undo, Redo
  • etc...
• Server - A middleware between the backend and the frontend. Support multiple of them in the same time, by multiplexing all the requests. Need to support: - TCP editor connection - WebSocket editor connection - Websocket frontend connection

Multi user support

Multi user support works by requiring each connected frontend/backend to supply a token. A token represent the namespace of a single user. Messages from the same user will only be delievered to its components.

On the first time you try to connect to a multi-user server with any backend, it will ask you for the token to use. You can retreive it from the web frontend, by clicking the key button on the top right of the screen. The frontend token is saved to localstorage so you can count it to remain the same.

To make it more user friendly, the backends cache the token under ~/.graffiti/token on MacOS/Linux, %USERPROFILE%/.graffiti/token on Windows.

Patches

Mermaid

The project apply the following patch to support comments on the web frontend:

diff --git a/packages/mermaid/src/diagrams/flowchart/elk/flowRenderer-elk.js b/packages/mermaid/src/diagrams/flowchart/elk/flowRenderer-elk.js
index 5ed06723..dc0fde0e 100644
--- a/packages/mermaid/src/diagrams/flowchart/elk/flowRenderer-elk.js
+++ b/packages/mermaid/src/diagrams/flowchart/elk/flowRenderer-elk.js
@@ -902,6 +902,7 @@ export const draw = async function (text, id, _version, diagObj) {
   });

   insertChildren(graph.children, parentLookupDb);
+  if (window.elk_beforeCallback) window.elk_beforeCallback(id, graph)
   log.info('after layout', JSON.stringify(graph, null, 2));
   const g = await elk.layout(graph);
   drawNodes(0, 0, g.children, svg, subGraphsEl, diagObj, 0);

NinjaKeys

The projects patches out the hotkey registeration of ninja keys, since it has a bug:

diff a/ninja-keys/src/ninja-keys.ts b/ninja-keys/src/ninja-keys.ts
--- a/ninja-keys/src/ninja-keys.ts
+++ b/ninja-keys/src/ninja-keys.ts
@@ -223,10 +223,0 @@ override update(changedProperties: PropertyValues<this>) {
-      this._flatData
-        .filter((action) => !!action.hotkey)
-        .forEach((action) => {
-          hotkeys(action.hotkey!, (event) => {
-            event.preventDefault();
-            if (action.handler) {
-              action.handler(action);
-            }
-          });
-        });

Credits

The logo icons created by Freepik - Flaticon.