Free your hands! Automatically generate sequence diagrams based on code, this IDEA plug-in is really fragrant!

When we usually look at the code, we often encounter some methods with more complicated processes. At this time, drawing a sequence diagram will help us understand the execution process of the method. However, the execution process of these methods is often long, and the hand-drawn sequence diagram is too troublesome! Today, I recommend an IDEA plug-in to you, which can generate sequence diagrams directly according to the method, which greatly improves efficiency!

SpringBoot actual e-commerce project mall (50k+star) address: https://github.com/macrozheng/mall

Introduction to SequenceDiagram

SequenceDiagram is a plug-in that can generate sequence diagrams based on code. Its functions are very powerful. The main features are as follows:

• Can generate timing diagram directly from code;
• You can navigate directly to the corresponding code from the sequence diagram;
• Classes and methods can be edited directly on the sequence diagram;
• Timing diagrams can be exported as images or PlantUML files.

use

Let's talk about the use of the SequenceDiagram plug-in, which is used to draw a login flowchart of the mall project.

• First of all, we need to install the SequenceDiagram plug-in in IDEA's plug-in market;

• Then find a method to try, here is the login method in my mall project as an example, right-click method to select generate sequence diagram;

• At this point, you can see the generated sequence diagram in the sequence diagram panel at the bottom. Here is a brief introduction to the usage of the buttons on the left;

• Click the Settings button, we can set the generation level, only display the classes in the project, skip the Getter/Setter and skip the constructor;

• In the sequence diagram, we can choose a class or method and jump directly to the source code;

• Some classes and methods of the directly generated sequence diagram are redundant, we can use the operation of deleting nodes to edit;

• After some simplification, a sequence diagram with a clear process is made. Isn't it very simple!

• We can export as pictures, currently only support svg format;

• It can also be exported as a PlantUML file. I introduced a very useful PlantUML plug-in before, and you can use it to preview and edit the PlantUML file;

• After the installation is successful, open the PlantUML file for preview, the effect is quite good;

• The automatically generated annotations are all method names. If we want to change them into meaningful Chinese annotations, we can use the PlantUML plug-in to modify them. The effect after modification is as follows.

Summarize

Drawing a sequence diagram does help us understand the execution flow of complex methods, but hand-drawing is too cumbersome. We can generate the initial sequence diagram through SequenceDiagram , then remove some useless classes and methods, and then modify it through the PlantUML plugin, so that we can quickly get a satisfactory sequence diagram, everyone is interested Give it a try!

References

Official website: https://github.com/Vanco/SequencePlugin