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

Selecting a theme

You can tailor your Mermaid diagrams to match the colors of your site or documentation. Themes in Mermaid are a combination of different color settings for rendering a diagram.

In this section, we will cover how to select a pre-made theme in Mermaid for websites or individual diagrams. The default theme in Mermaid is fairly discrete but not completely neutral. There are a few themes to choose from that could match your needs. On top of that, customization is also an option.

In the configuration data you pass into Mermaid, the theme is set by a top-level variable called theme.

Similar to other configurations, altering the theme variable can be done for the whole site using an initialize call, or just for one diagram by using a directive in the diagram.

We will look in more detail at how to select a theme using these two approaches in the upcoming subsections.

Changing the theme for a whole site

When you want to set a theme for a whole site, the configuration...