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

Exploring Additional features

In this section, you will learn how to add a unique number to each message for more detailed descriptions in the surrounding documentation. If you read on, you will also learn how to highlight parts of a sequence diagram with a background color of your choice. Let's start with the autonumbering feature.

Displaying Sequence Numbers

Mermaid allows the numbering of messages in sequence diagrams. Each message passed from one actor to another could be assigned a unique number. This is useful when you want to create a reference to a particular message in the surrounding documentation, in cases where that message might warrant a more detailed description.

This feature can be turned on by having the autonumber keyword placed anywhere in the diagram or by configuring it to be turned on. You can read about how to turn autonumbering on using configuration in Chapter 4, Modifying Configurations with or without Directives. The configuration option you...