UML diagramming without the drawing

3. May 2009 in General

Not a symfony related blog entry but I ran into this tool yesterday and I pretty like it. So I want to share my finding with you. Maybe you know it: You are working on some documentation in your favorit wiki (trac, redmine…) and you like to add some UML diagramm fragments to it. Switching to a vector drawing or UML-Tool, creating the diagram, saving it as a bitmap graphic, uploading it to the wiki and linking it in the wiki-markup… *phew* A lot of work for a simple task.

It can be done easier Just use yUML for creating the UML fragments. The free service use a different, more declarative, approach.You can add UML via image tags to your blog or wiki.

For example:<img src=”http://yuml.me/diagram/class/[Order]->[Position]“>” /> results in

Of course you can create more complex diagrams like this one (from the yUML documentation).

<img src=”http://yuml.me/diagram/class/[Customer]<>1-orders 0..*>[Order], [Order]++*-*>[LineItem], [Order]-1>[DeliveryMethod], [Order]*-*>[Product], [Category]<->[Product], [DeliveryMethod]^[National], [DeliveryMethod]^[International]“/>

It is surprising, what can be done with this solution

Aggregation
Relations
Composition
Inheritance
Cardinality
Labels
Classes with methods and properties

All included. Beside class diagrams Use cases can created also.

← sfAmfPlugin 1.2.3 for Flex/Symfony released

sfAmfPlugin 1.3.0 released →

6 responses to UML diagramming without the drawing

Jordi Cabot said on 3. May 2009

If you liked this tool you may be interested also in checking other similar tools I list here: http://modeling-languages.com/blog/content/textual-notationslanguages-define-uml-models-list-tools
Timo Haberkern said on 3. May 2009

Hi,

thanks for the link. I have known TextUML but none of the other

Timo
Duane Gran said on 3. May 2009

Another approach out of the box is the sfPropelGraphviz plug in:

http://trac.symfony-project.org/wiki/sfPropelGraphviz

There is also one for doctrine.
Rubino said on 3. May 2009

That’s pretty cool.
Just need a generator that parses the schema yml now
Tobin Harris said on 4. May 2009

Nice review Timo, thanks for the positive feedback

I loved your phrase “UML fragments” for describing what yUML is about. Might use that if you don’t mind!
Alex Stoneham said on 15. May 2009

I am drooling for Rubinos comment, You give the world something great and they want more hey Great work yUML
Great work Symfony Core team, I am a happy individual knowing I have chosen a winning strat