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

Core elements in Sequence Diagram

In this section, you will learn how to render or create sequence diagrams using Mermaid. You will also learn about the fundamental elements of a sequence diagram, what they represent, and how to define them in Mermaid. Let's begin by looking at a demonstration of a sequence diagram to see what one looks like, and then discuss the elements involved.

The sample sequence diagram describes a scenario involving a woman, a man, and a dog. For some reason, the dog is lost, and the woman tells the man to start looking for the dog. The man calls out to the dog, which barks in return. The man then tells the woman he found the dog.

In the following diagram, we can see this scenario illustrated as a sequence diagram:

Figure 7.1 – An example of a sequence diagram

Figure 7.1 – An example of a sequence diagram

In the preceding scenario, we have three actors—also called participants—which are the woman, the man, and the dog. The participants are entities...