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plantuml

Difference between plantuml.jar and local server

I wanted to know what is the difference between:

I have been using a local PlantUML server to generate .png files from .puml with:

cat ./pilot.puml | curl -v -H "Content-Type: text/plain" --data-binary @- http://localhost:8080/plantuml/png/ --output - > out.png

However I need for each .puml a file and refer them in my README.md.

I know with plantuml.jar one can generate multiple .pngs from a single one but i am afraid it can upload my data to plantuml public server.

Solution

  • The local server and the jar do the same thing: generates image from the text based diagram. The difference is the frontend.

    • The server gives you a web based UI and web based API,
    • the jar gives you a command line interface.

    The generation happens locally in both cases.

    The jar can have a much better (and more insecure) access to your disks. It can be useful if you want to generate multiple diagrams in the same directory. Or if you're include paths changes frequently (if you use !include).

    Also if you use github you can try Mermaid. And if you use gitlab or have your own git repository with more control over it you can try Asciidoc with diagrams. Both of them allows you to embed your diagrams in your readme (asciidoc even let you include external puml files).