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

That's a wrap for this chapter! Let's now recall all the lessons from this chapter. In this chapter, we learned where and how to use Mermaid. Due to this, you know how to include Mermaid as a standalone JavaScript library in a website. We also looked at an assortment of different leading tools, editors, and wikis that provide support for Mermaid integration. We have gained enough knowledge to perform hands-on tasks with Markdown. We also learned how to set up two types of custom documentation by using Docsify and Gatsby, both of which support Mermaid with Markdown.

At this point, you are aware of Mermaid and have sufficient knowledge of the tools you need to set up a playground for using and experimenting with Mermaid. In the next chapter, we will explore some sibling projects that make it easy to draw Mermaid diagrams online, and also provide live previews. You will also learn how to draw your first Mermaid diagram.