Properly fill the title of a component

[DaelDe]

the diagram:

@startuml
interface _COMP_EXT1_IF1 as SwfComponentBase
component _COMP8 as RoadBoundaryFusion
@enduml

results in the formatted graph:

{
  "nodes": [
    {
      "name": "_COMP_EXT1_IF1",
      "members": [],
      "id": "_COMP_EXT1_IF1",
      "type": "Interface",
      "hidden": true
    },
    {
      "name": "_COMP8",
      "id": "_COMP8",
      "type": "Component",
      "title": "_COMP8",
      "hidden": true
    }
  ],
  "edges": [
    {
      "from": "_COMP8",
      "to": "",
      "name": "contains",
      "hidden": true
    }
  ]
}

ID, title and name of a component are identical but. But the title should be the string after as.

For example: component _COMP8 as RoadBoundaryFusion should result in

    {
      "name": "_COMP8",
      "id": "_COMP8",
      "type": "Component",
      "title": "RoadBoundaryFusion",
      "hidden": true
    }

[Enteee]

I think this related to #10 and should be fixed with #13 .

[Enteee]

when #13 gets merged, the diagram posted above should be parsed to:

{
  "nodes": [
    {
      "name": "diag",
      "diagrams": [
        {
          "elements": [
            {
              "name": "SwfComponentBase",
              "members": []
            },
            {
              "name": "RoadBoundaryFusion"
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "id": "diag",
      "type": "File",
      "hidden": true
    },
    {
      "name": "SwfComponentBase",
      "members": [],
      "id": "SwfComponentBase",
      "type": "Interface",
      "hidden": true
    },
    {
      "name": "RoadBoundaryFusion",
      "id": "RoadBoundaryFusion",
      "type": "Component",
      "title": "RoadBoundaryFusion",
      "hidden": true
    }
  ],
  "edges": [
    {
      "from": "diag",
      "to": "SwfComponentBase",
      "name": "contains",
      "hidden": true
    },
    {
      "from": "RoadBoundaryFusion",
      "to": "diag",
      "name": "contains",
      "hidden": true
    },
    {
      "from": "diag",
      "to": "RoadBoundaryFusion",
      "name": "contains",
      "hidden": true
    }
  ]
}

would this help you?

[DaelDe]

Thank you for the fast reaction.

The output above is still not what I need because there is information lost. Given the component definition from the diagram: component _COMP8 as RoadBoundaryFusion _COMP8 is is like an identifier of the component and RoadBoundaryFusion is like an alias. I think plantUML has no strict definition here but I need both.

So I would expect:

{
      "name": "_COMP8",
      "id": "_COMP8",
      "type": "Component",
      "title": "RoadBoundaryFusion",
      "hidden": true
}

This is my interpretation but I think it makes sense. There is no dedicated id for the component, so the anme could be used because it has to be somehow unique among the diagram. The alias after as is then the title of the component.

[Enteee]

I understand, this is a bit of a bigger change because I currently just ignore the id. But this makes perfect sense. I will change that. Probably tomorrow though..

[DaelDe]

This would be really helpful.

I also tried to create a peg grammar for plantUML but yours is better so I will further test it with our diagrams. Unfortunately plantUML has no real language specification and is not strict in checking the syntax. This makes it really hard.

[Enteee]

Yeah, I was struggling with this as well. I had to painfully reverse-engineer by looking at the existing implementation (the source code is a pain to read though). Plantuml not having a proper language specification is the one big reason why I started this project. Your contribution is always welcome. Thank you.

[Enteee]

So currently, the id field is a feature of the graph-formatter and is always id = name . I am actually contemplating right now If i should add an id property to all classes. The logic would then be:

# with:
# component [name]
# component [name] as [title]
# component "[title]" as [name]
# component [name] as "[title]"

if there is no 'as':
   id = name
   name = name
else:
  id = name
  name = title

then we would not need this additional title attribute.

[Enteee]

I am not 100% convinced about the solution proposed in my last comment. Because an id should ideally be globally identifying and hence would need to include package and namespace information... I didn't implement this in the parser yet because this would be extremely complicated to do. Nevertheless having three attributes id, name, title seems to be a good alternative.

[DaelDe]

I also see these 2 options. However, in plantUML is no concept of a globally unique id. I think it is not needed, just has to be unique for the diagram where it appears.

However, if you for some reason need it to be globally unique in your code you can also use something like https://github.com/ai/nanoid . For me both solutions are fine.

You could stick to the easier solution if there are no immediate complaints.

[Enteee]

@DaelDe see pull request #16 for a first draft of an implementation of this feature.

[Enteee]

I've decided to implement the following for now:

# with:
# component [name]
# component [title] as [name]
# component "[title]" as [name]
# component [name] as "[title]"

if there is no 'as':
   name = name
   title =  name
else:
  name = name
  title = title

changes from my previous design:

• id still remains just a graph-formatter feature
• fix component [name] as [title] -> component [title] as [name]

[DaelDe]

That's quite a change :). I will test i when it is released. Or is there a way for me to test it before?

[Enteee]

it's not that much. It's just most of the fixtures changing because of the new title attribute. If you want to have a look at the code just look at the files in the src/-folder not ending in .pegjs. If you want to run the code then just:

$ git clone --single-branch --branch feature/support-uml-element-titles https://github.com/Enteee/plantuml-parser.git
$ cd plantuml-parser
$ npm install
$ npm start 

should be enough.

[DaelDe]

I am not using the cli, but the library.

I will have a look at the modified tests, should be enough.