PlantUML

PlantUMLis a component that allows to quickly write :

• sequence diagram,
• use case diagram,
• class diagram,
• activity diagram,
• component diagram,
• state diagram
• object diagram

Diagrams are defined using asimple and intuitive language.

They can be generated in PNG or SVG format.It is also possible to generate ASCII artdiagrams (only for sequence diagrams).

Each diagram description begins with the keyword @startumlthen ends with the keyword @enduml.

You can refer to thePlantUML Language Reference Guide.

Thoses descriptions may be included into :

• Text files (.txt),
• Html files (.html or .htm),
• Java sources files (.java),C/C++ source files (.c, .h, .cpp)
• LaTeX sources files (.tex),
• APT files(.apt)
• Word files(.doc)
• URL

Of course, if you use Html, LaTeX, APT or Java/C/C++ files, you should putdiagram descriptions into comments.

File naming

By default, .png file have the same name as thesource file used to generated them (only the extension changes).

An automatic sequence is added if a source file contains severaloccurences of @startuml.

It is possible to use a different file name for the .pngfile. For example:

@startuml image.png
Alice->Bob: Authentication Request
Bob-->Alice: Authentication Response
@enduml

In this example, the .png file will be named image.png.

(Please note that you should not use this feature with Wordintegration.)

Running

To launch diagram's images generation, you should have Java 1.5installed on your machine, and optionally Graphvizsoftware which are used for all diagrams but sequence diagrams .

You can then download the jar file plantuml.jar,and save it on your local disk.

You can run it using several ways:

•   Use the Eclipse Plugin
•   Use it with NetBeans
•   Use the online servlet,(Explanation here)
•   Reverse Engineering with PlantUML Dependency
•   Call it from Javascript
•   Call it from PHP
•   Call it from Java
•   Call it from Groovy
•   Run it directly from Word
•   Runit directly from Open Office
•   Write an ANT task
•   Use the Maven2 plugin
•   Run it from Emacs
•   Run it from Sublime Text Editor
•   Run it from VIM
•   Double-click on the .jar to run it
•   Use a command line
•   PlantUML Editor: Afast and simple UML editor using WPF Dotnet
•   Use EasyUmlEditor
•   Use the online demonstration with the JavaApplet
•   Useit with Almost Plain Text (APT) files
•   Use it with LaTeX
•   Generate diagrams with Javadoc
•   Use it with Doxygen
•   Integrateit with MediaWiki
•   Integrateit with Redmine
•   Integrateit with Confluence
•   Integrate itwith Trac
•   Integrate itwith DokuWiki
•   Integrate itwith Sphinx
•   Generate PlantUML diagramsfrom SqlALchemy models
•   Integrate itwith XWiki
•   Integrateit with docutils
•   Useit with AsciiDoc
•   Generate UML description from Java sourcesusing a doclet
•   Install your own servlet
•   Use it with textcube