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 interactivity to a Gantt Chart

In this section, we will look at how to add interactivity to your Gantt charts. Everything you have learned so far has been about rendering Gantt chart. The features up till now can be easily tried using Mermaid Live Editor or any other Mermaid-supported editor. However, interaction is an advanced feature, and the easiest way of experimenting with this functionality is to use Mermaid integrated on a HTML page. This way, you will have control over the security settings, as well as the possibility to add JavaScript functions.

You will learn to make it possible for users to interact with your Gantt chart by using mouse clicks. But first, let's understand why we need to add interactivity to our diagrams in the following sub-sections.

Why add interactivity to a Gantt Chart?

Sometimes, when you have a Gantt chart, you only visualize the high-level aspects of the project plan or the different tasks at hand. What if each task described on...