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

Defining an Entity and its attributes

In this section, you will learn about entities and how they are represented in an entity-relationship diagram. You will also learn about the syntax of defining an entity in Mermaid, as well as how to add attributes to an entity.

One big advantage of using Mermaid to create an ER diagram, for you as an author, is that you only provide data about entities; you do not need to take care of their layout. You don't have to worry about the positioning of the individual entities and relationship edges while rendering the diagram; Mermaid takes care of this for you. You just need to define the entities and focus on how they are structured using a well-defined syntax. Then, Mermaid will render a nice-looking diagram for you based on your inputs. First, let's understand how an entity is represented. Then, we will have a closer look at the syntax for defining an entity in Mermaid.

How is an Entity represented?

An entity can be any definable...