Rendering PlantUml Diagrams

PlantUML is a text embeddable UML diagramming tool that uses a simple markup language to generate UML diagrams that are then embedded into the markdown document.

You can embed PlantUML blocks using* uing the following code block syntax used by many common Markdown platforms (including GitHub):

• Code block syntax: ```plantuml to delineate the plantuml block

PlantUML has to be enabled in the settings via the Markdown.UsePlantUml configuration switch in your settings.

Codeblock Syntax

Codeblock syntax uses the triple tick prefix You can use code block syntax if the editor misformatting becomes an issue.

This syntax supports any of the flavors that are supported by the PlantUML server.

Configuration Settings

In order to use PlantUML you have to enable it first via the Markdown.UsePlantUml setting, which can be set in the UI Settings or the JSON configuration file.

There are two settings available:

• UsePlantUml
  Determines whether PlantUML rendering is enabled or not.

• PlantUmlLServerUrl
  The server base URL that is used to render the diagram. This allows you a few options to specify a different server or for changing the output mechanism from the default /svg/ to /png/ for example.

The default server url is:

http://www.PlantUML.com/PlantUml/png/

You can switch the /png/ for other output formats such as /svg/ to generate images or /txt/ to generate ASCII art text.

More about PlantUML Server

You can find out more about the PlantUML public server and how you can run your own local instance.

Resources

• PlantUML Site
• PlantUML Online Server and Playground
• Plant UML Examples
• Running a local copy of PlantUML