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

Summary

And that's a wrap for this chapter! You have mastered how to generate entity-relationship diagrams using Mermaid. First, you learned about the basics of what an entity-relationship diagram is, what its various components are, and how they are represented. Then, you learned about the syntax of defining an ER diagram. You know the two different ways you can declare your entities. After that, you learned how to add attributes to an entity. You explored the different types of relationships between entities and the concept of cardinalities so that you can establish one-to-one, many-to-one, and many-to-many relationships. You know that relationships in ER diagrams can be either identifying or non-identifying, and that they are represented by solid and dashed lines, respectively. Finally, you explored the different theme variables you can use to make your ER diagrams more beautiful. You also learned how to change the main background, text color, label background, layout, and...