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

Adding notes and changing the direction of rendering

Sometimes it is useful to be able to add comments or some extra clarifications right into the state diagram. With Mermaid, you can do this by adding notes into your diagram and the notes are added as a block of text in a box anchored to a state. In this section, you will learn how to use this feature as well as changing the direction in which the nodes are positioned in the diagram. Let's start with how to add notes.

The syntax starts with the keyword note, a position and a state ID where the direction can be right of or left of. One thing to be aware of is that this direction depends on the current direction of the rendering in the state diagram, which means that left of can also become above in practice, and right of can similarly become below if the rendering direction is from right to left. We will return to the subject of rendering directions later in this section.

There are two ways to add notes into a state diagram...