JHipster Domain Language (JDL) Permalink to " JHipster Domain Language (JDL)"

The JDL is a JHipster-specific domain language where you can describe all your applications, deployments, entities and their relationships in a single file (or more than one) with a user-friendly syntax.

You can use our online JDL-Studio or one of the JHipster IDE plugins/extensions, which are available for:

to create a JDL file and its UML visualization. You can create and export or share the URL of your JDL model as well.

This can be used as a replacement to using the entity sub-generator and is the recommended approach. The idea is that it is much easier to manage relationships using a visual tool than with the classical Yeoman questions and answers.

The JDL project is available on GitHub, it is an Open Source project like JHipster (Apache 2.0 License). It can also be used as a node library to do JDL parsing.

If you like the JHipster Domain Language, the JDL Studio or the JHipster IDE don’t forget to give them a star on GitHub - thanks!


If you don’t know the JDL yet, it is recommended to go through the Getting Started page first.

However, if you’re already familiar with the JDL and what you can do with it, you can also browse the detailed documentation:

  1. Getting Started
  2. Applications
  3. Entities & fields
  4. Enums
  5. Relationships
  6. Options
  7. Deployments
  8. Troubleshooting

You can also check the official JDL sample repository and propose examples if you want!


In case you already have existing databases and would like to create the JDL representation then you can use this project SQL to JDL which will help you get started quickly.