grunt-plantuml

This module provides a grunt multi-task generating images from plantuml diagram sources.

If you generate HTML technical documention from textual sources, you may want to maintain only sources of UML diagrams in your repository and generate the pictures only during the documentation build. You will be able to do changes easily, without committing both diagram sources and pictures and sychronizing them manually.

If you want to just quickly convert a plantuml source file to a picture, you can use the node-plantuml command-line tool puml, which this task is based on.

Installation

You need node >= 0.12, npm and grunt >= 0.4 installed and your project build managed by a Gruntfile with the necessary modules listed in package.json. If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the [Getting Started] guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may ensure native dependencies of this plugin and install it:

1. Install pre-requisites: Graphviz and Java depending on your operating system

2. Install the Grunt task:

$ npm install grunt-plantuml --save-dev

Configuration

Add the plantuml entry with the plantuml task configuration to the options of the grunt.initConfig method:

grunt.initConfig({
  plantuml: {
    one: {
      files: {
        'dist/doc/images/diagram.png': ['doc/images/diagram.puml']
      }
    },
    all: {
      src: ['doc/images/*.puml']
      dest: 'dist/doc/images'
    }
  }
});

The configuration consists of key-value pairs with the output image path as a key pointing to the plantuml input file. If you specify more source files by wildcards, the destination should be a directory; the source file extension wil lbe replaced by the output format in the output file name.

Then, load the plugin:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-plantuml');

Build

Call the plantuml task:

$ grunt plantuml

or integrate it to your build sequence in Gruntfile.js:

grunt.registerTask('default', ['plantuml', ...]);

Customizing

Default behaviour of the task can be tweaked by the task options; these are the defaults:

grunt.initConfig({
  plantuml: {
    one: {
      files: {
        'dist/doc/images/diagram.png': ['doc/images/diagram.puml']
      },
      options: {
        dot: '...',       // path to the dot executable
        config: '...',    // path to the dot config file
        charset: 'utf-8', // source file character set
        format: 'png'     // ascii|unicode|eps|png|svg
      }
    }
  }
});

See the documentation of the command-line puml tool for more information.

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using Grunt.

Release History

• 2018-04-27 v1.0.0 Dropped support of Node.js 4
• 2016-12-19 v0.2.2 Update dependencies
• 2016-12-11 v0.2.1 Support Node.js 0.10.x
• 2016-26-08 v0.2.0 Upgrade to Grunt 1.x
• 2016-03-05 v0.1.6 Update dependencies, improve build testing
• 2016-03-04 v0.1.5 Fix missing direct dependency on node-plantuml
• 2016-03-04 v0.1.4 Update dependencies
• 2016-01-10 v0.1.3 Initial release

License

Copyright (c) 2016-2019 Ferdinand Prantl

Licensed under the MIT license.