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

Chapter 7: Creating Sequence Diagrams

A sequence diagram lets you model and visualize interactions between different actors or objects in a system, as well as the order of those interactions. A sequence diagram focuses on one scenario and captures the system behavior for that duration. This type of diagram will let you model how different actors interact within a system, which messages are being sent between them, and in which order those messages are sent. Sequence diagrams will help you to describe the functionality of a system in a way that is easy for a reader to understand. They also assist in verifying that a scenario will be handled by the design. Another strength of sequence diagrams is that even first-time readers without prior knowledge of them can usually understand the meaning of a diagram without much explanation.

In this chapter, we will look at the following topics:

  • The core elements of a sequence diagram
  • How to handle different paths of events in sequence...