JS Sequence Diagrams

Generates UML sequence diagrams from simple text
https://bramp.github.io/js-sequence-diagrams/

by Andrew Brampton 2012-2017

Example

We turn

Alice->Bob: Hello Bob, how are you?
Note right of Bob: Bob thinks
Bob-->Alice: I am good thanks!

into

Sample generated UML diagram

Requirements

You will need Snap.svg, Web Font Loader (if you wish to use custom fonts), underscore.js (or lodash), and optionally jQuery.

Installation

bower

Run bower install bramp/js-sequence-diagrams and include the scripts below:

<script src="{{ bower directory }}/bower-webfontloader/webfont.js" />
<script src="{{ bower directory }}/snap.svg/dist/snap.svg-min.js" />
<script src="{{ bower directory }}/underscore/underscore-min.js" />
<script src="{{ bower directory }}/js-sequence-diagrams/dist/sequence-diagram-min.js" />

also import the CSS if you plan to use the hand drawn theme:

<link href="{{ bower directory }}/js-sequence-diagrams/dist/sequence-diagram-min.css" rel="stylesheet" />

Not using bower? No problem. Just download the dependencies, and include them yourself. If you plan to use the hand draw theme, don’t forget to put the two fontfiles in your css folder: /fonts/daniel/danielbd.woff and /fonts/daniel/danielbd.woff2

Usage

You can use the Diagram class like:

<div id="diagram">Diagram will be placed here</div>
<script> 
  var d = Diagram.parse("A->B: Does something");
  var options = {theme: 'simple'};
  d.drawSVG('diagram', options);
</script>

or use jQuery to do all the work:

<script src="{{ bower directory }}/jquery/dist/jquery.min.js" />
<div class="diagram">A->B: Message</div>
<script>
  var options = {theme: 'hand'};
  $(".diagram").sequenceDiagram(options);
</script>

For full examples check out the demo site.

Options

var options = {
    // Change the styling of the diagram, typically one of 'simple', 'hand'. New themes can be registered with registerTheme(...).
    theme: string,

    // CSS style to apply to the diagram's svg tag. (Only supported if using snap.svg)
    css_class: string,
};

Styling

The following CSS classes are applied to the SVG diagram when using snap.svg:

sequence: Applies to main SVG tag.
title: Applied to the title of the diagram.
actor: Applied to the actors.
signal: Applied to the signals.
note: Applied to all notes.

The diagram can then be customised, for example:

.signal text {
    fill: #000000;
}
.signal text:hover {
    fill: #aaaaaa
}
.note rect, .note path {
    fill: #ffff00;
}
.title rect, .title path,
.actor rect, .actor path {
    fill: #ffffff
}

Raphaël Deprecation

Version 1.x of this library used Raphaël for drawing the diagrams, however, Raphaël had some limitations, and since disappeared from the Internet. We’ve decided to move to Snap.svg, which is a pure SVG implementation, instead of Raphaël which in addition to SVG, also supported VML (on Internet Explorer). This support of VML made it impossible to use some newer SVG capabilities. Native SVG allows us to use CSS styling, better font support, animations and more.

To aid in the transition Version 2.x will support both Raphaël and Snap.svg (preferring Snap.svg). If you include Raphaël instead of snap.svg, it will default to using Raphaël as the rendering library. For example

<script src="{{ bower directory }}/raphael/raphael-min.js"></script>

There are also four transitional themes, ‘snapSimple’, ‘snapHand’, ‘raphaelSimple’, ‘raphaelHand’, which force the use of either Snap.svg, or Raphaël.

The plan is to drop support for Raphaël in a future release, simplifying the library, and reducing the file size.

Adding a Font

Raphael requires Cufon style fonts. Find the font you want in ttf or otf format, visit Cufon’s site and process it into a javascript file. Then ensure the font is included via the HTML, or recompile after altering main.js. So far only the hand drawn font, Daniel Bold, has been included.

Build requirements

The build is managed by a Makefile, and uses various tools available from npm. Thus both make and npm are required, and can easily be installed on any Linux or Mac machine.

make

The Makefile will use npm to install all the dev dependencies, build, and test.

Testing

We use qunit for testing. It can be ran from the command line, or via a browser. The command line actually tests multiple permutations of lodash, Underscore, and with and without minification.

make test
...
Global summary:
┌───────┬───────┬────────────┬────────┬────────┬─────────┐
│ Files │ Tests │ Assertions │ Failed │ Passed │ Runtime │
├───────┼───────┼────────────┼────────┼────────┼─────────┤
│ 1     │ 13    │ 231        │ 0      │ 231    │ 250     │
└───────┴───────┴────────────┴────────┴────────┴─────────┘

or make and then open test/qunit.html in a browser. Finally a simple playground is available at test/test.html.

How to release

Make sure all changes checked in
Bump version in src/main.js and bower.json
make clean
make
git add -f src/main.js bower.json dist/*
git commit -m "Released version 2.x.x"
git push origin master
git tag -a v2.x.x -m v2.x.x
git push origin v2.x.x

TODO

Other themes
Automate the release process
Testing that checks the generated SVG is correct
Improve the hand drawn theme
- "Note left of Bob: " generates a small empty box.
- The font seems to have extra margin at the bottom.
- The wiggly lines don’t always touch.
Dozens of other issues on https://github.com/bramp/js-sequence-diagrams/issues

Contributors

via GitHub

Thanks

This project makes use of Jison, snap.svg, underscore.js, and the awesome Daniel font (which is free to use for any purpose).

Many thanks to Web Sequence Diagrams which greatly inspired this project, and forms the basis for the syntax.

Web Sequence Diagrams Server side version with a commercial offering
flowchart.js A similar project that draws flow charts in the browser

Licence (Simplified BSD License)

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.