PlantUML Diagrams Preprocessor for Foliant

PlantUML is a tool to generate diagrams from plain text. This preprocessor finds PlantUML diagrams definitions in the source and converts them into images on the fly during project build.

Installation

$ pip install foliantcontrib.plantuml

Config

To enable the preprocessor, add plantuml to preprocessors section in the project config:

preprocessors:
    - plantuml

The preprocessor has a number of options:

preprocessors:
    - plantuml:
        cache_dir: !path .diagramscache
        plantuml_path: plantuml
        format: png
        params:
            ...
        parse_raw: true
        as_image: true

cache_dir : Path to the directory with the generated diagrams. It can be a path relative to the project root or a global one; you can use ~/ shortcut.

>   **Note**
>
>   To save time during build, only new and modified diagrams are rendered. The generated images are cached and reused in future builds.

plantuml_path : Path to PlantUML launcher. By default, it is assumed that you have the command plantuml in your PATH, but if PlantUML uses another command to launch, or if the plantuml launcher is installed in a custom place, you can define it here.

format : Diagram format, list of supported formats. Default: png.

Another way to specify format is to use t<format> option in params.

params : Params passed to the image generation command:

    preprocessors:
        - plantuml:
            params:
                config: !path plantuml.cfg

To see the full list of params, run the command that launches PlantUML, with `-h` command line option.

parse_raw : If this flag is true, the preprocessor will also process all PlantUML diagrams which are not wrapped in <plantuml>...</plantuml> tags. Default value is false.

as_image : If true — inserts scheme into document as md-image. If false — inserts the file generated by PlantUML directly into the document (only for svg format). Default: true

Usage

To insert a diagram definition in your Markdown source, enclose it between <plantuml>...</plantuml> tags (indentation inside tags is optional):

Here’s a diagram:

<plantuml>
    @startuml
        ...
    @enduml
</plantuml>

To set a caption, use caption option:

Diagram with a caption:

<plantuml caption="Sample diagram from the official site">
    @startuml
        ...
    @enduml
</plantuml>

You can override values from the preprocessor config for each diagram.

By default, diagrams are in PNG. But this diagram is in EPS:

<plantuml caption="Vector diagram" format="eps">
    @startuml
        ...
    @enduml
</plantuml>

Sometimes it can be necessary to process auto-generated documents that contain multiple PlantUML diagrams definitions without using Foliant-specific tags syntax. Use the parse_raw option in these cases.