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

Various Mermaid integrations (Editors, Wikis, CMS, and others etc.)

In this section, we will highlight a few tools that have good support for Mermaid that you should know about.

List of Tools and Sites that Use Mermaid

If the following list is not enough for you, there is a bigger list in the Mermaid GitHub repository: https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid/#/integrations?id=productivity.

Here we have an edited list of Mermaid tools and integrations.

GitLab

GitLab is a platform where you can use a Git source code repository on, along with an accompanying web interface. It is a complete DevOps platform that's delivered as an application. If you commit a Markdown file, with Mermaid to a GitLab repository, GitLab will render the Mermaid document, including the diagram. The following is an example of what a Mermaid diagram looks like inside the GitLab repository:

Figure 2.4 – A Markdown file with Mermaid in it in GitLab

Figure 2.4 – A Markdown file with Mermaid in it in GitLab

If you are...