Mermaid – Generation of diagrams and flowcharts from text

https://mermaidjs.github.io/mermaid-live-editor

by atrudeau • 7 years ago

103 19 7 years ago

mermaidjs.github.io

We used mermaid.js for a while. I didn't like the fact that it worked only in a browser, and installing phantom.js (which installed a whole pre-compiled binary of Chromium) was painful.

We also ran into some limitations on how we could control the final display.

So we moved all our diagrams to PlantUML and found ourselves quite happy with it.

achamayou• 7 years ago

I’ve used mermaid for documentation, through plugins for mkdocs and Sphinx. What’s great about it is that the diagrams are stored as readable source text in the documentation, which is easy to diff and modify along with the rest of the doc (search and replace when renaming a component etc).

That’s a huge benefit compared to storing rendered bitmaps, with a source file next to them. There’s much more friction involved in keeping those up to date, the changes don’t display usefully in PRs etc. They’re almost never up to date as a result.

Another thing mermaid lets you easily do is generate sequence diagrams from code such as testcases, because the format is so simple and line-driven. The outpout can also be included in documentation as samples, and is guaranteed to be up-to-date.

n1000• 7 years ago

typora.io renders mermaid and some others in markdown documents

https://support.typora.io/Draw-Diagrams-With-Markdown/

sorokod• 7 years ago

Not "in" markdown documents but "from". In the documents the diagram markdown is rendered as itself . When exporting markdown to pdf for example, the diagram markdown is rendered as a diagram.

andreareina• 7 years ago

For anyone interested in generating diagrams from text, I recommend also taking a look at Graphviz[1] and PlantUML[2]. Graphviz excels at box-and-arrow kind of diagrams as well as graphs, I frequently use it to visually map out dependencies, processes and state transitions, etc. There's an online version here[3]. PlantUML I use less, both because it's slower (you pay the JVM startup tax on every invocation) and because I have less use for the kind of diagrams it specializes in.

[1] https://graphviz.com

[2] http://plantuml.com

[3] https://dreampuf.github.io/GraphvizOnline/

flarg• 7 years ago

Plantuml is pretty good because it like a mini programming language for diagrams, and not just UML. There's also UMLet which I often read recommend.

metaphor• 7 years ago

A quick correction to citation:

[1] https://www.graphviz.org/

tomkludy• 7 years ago

And https://www.websequencediagrams.com

doug1001• 7 years ago

graphviz: rock solid, and bindings for just about every language

leemailll• 7 years ago

Does this offer something different from Ditaa or Graphviz?

jalk• 7 years ago

Sequence diagrams for one. You could probably do those in graphviz but not without serious fiddeling/invisible nodes and other tricks that would make your source far from being succinct, which is kind of the whole point

pritambaral2• 7 years ago

PlantUML supports sequence diagrams, and a whole lot else.

mch82• 7 years ago

Thanks for sharing! Just tried some UML sequence diagrams and this looks like it’ll be a lot more convenient than other UML tools.

Here’s the syntax guide: https://github.com/mermaidjs/mermaid-gitbook/blob/master/con...

Edit: And here’s a plugin for VS Code that adds a live render pane to the text editor - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vstirbu....

JetSpiegel• 7 years ago

This is integrated with Gitlab, you can use it in every textbox.

EamonnMR• 7 years ago

We use this to diagram our systems at a high level in documentation. It can be fiddly to get it exactly how you want it but it's a lot faster and easier to version control then, say, PowerPoint.

hunta20972• 7 years ago

FYI: Mermaid is supported in Markdown on both GitLab and GitHub.

It's awesome, I hope they continue to extend it.

jaxn• 7 years ago

Can you provide a source for Github support? I have looked before and been unable to find a way to use Mermaid in Github markdown.

hunta20972• 7 years ago

Wow - you are correct.

I must have imagined it.

GitLab FTW!

abc3• 7 years ago

Has anyone managed to make decent looking org charts using Mermaid or one of the other text-based diagram generators mentioned in this thread? I've been looking for a way to make it easier for the one person we have who is working in HR to update the org chart each time we make a new hire. As bureaucratic as an org chart can be, keeping our up-to-date makes it easier for new people to figure out who everyone else is, and also helps existing staff figure out where newer employees fit in.

Mermaid – Generation of diagrams and flowcharts from text

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