Book Image

The Official Guide to Mermaid.js

By : Knut Sveidqvist, Ashish Jain
Book Image

The Official Guide to Mermaid.js

By: Knut Sveidqvist, Ashish Jain

Overview of this book

Mermaid is a JavaScript-based charting and diagramming tool that lets you represent diagrams using text and code, which simplifies the maintenance of complex diagrams. This is a great option for developers as they’re more familiar with code, rather than using special tools for generating diagrams. Besides, diagrams in code simplify maintenance and ensure that the code is supported by version control systems. In some cases, Mermaid makes refactoring support for name changes possible while also enabling team collaboration for review distribution and updates. Developers working with any system will be able to put their knowledge to work with this practical guide to using Mermaid for documentation. The book is also a great reference for looking up the syntax for specific diagrams when authoring diagrams. You’ll start by learning the importance of accurate and visual documentation. Next, the book introduces Mermaid and establishes how to use it to create effective documentation. By using different tools, editors, or a custom documentation platform, you’ll also understand how to use Mermaid syntax for various diagrams. Later chapters cover advanced configuration settings and theme options to manipulate your diagram as per your needs. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-versed with Mermaid diagrams and how they can be used in your workflows.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started with Mermaid
7
Section 2: The Most Popular Diagrams
12
Section 3: Powerful Diagrams for the Advanced User

Chapter 10: Demonstrating Connections Using Entity Relationship Diagrams

An entity-relationship diagram is a graphical representation that is used to visualize the different types of entities that exist within a system. It also shows how these entities are related to each other. It can visually represent the details of an entity by highlighting its various attributes and their types. It is also referred to as an ER diagram. Although ER diagrams can be used to model almost any system, they are commonly used in database design to model the schema. In software engineering, they are used during the planning phase to model different system elements and their relationships.

In this chapter, you will learn how to use Mermaid to generate entity-relationship diagrams. You will learn how to create entities, how to define their attributes, how to add different relationships between entities, and how to label them. You will also learn how to customize your ER diagram by modifying the theme...