Class diagram generation from Java source

Abhishek JainJune 11th, 2012Last Updated: October 22nd, 2012

0 194 1 minute read

UMLGraph allows the declarative specification and drawing of UML class and sequence diagrams. The specification is done in text diagrams, that are then transformed into the appropriate graphical representations.

UMLGraph is implemented as a javadoc doclet (a program satisfying the doclet API that specifies the content and format of the output generated by the javadoc tool). Furthermore, the output of UMLGraph needs to be post-processed with the Graphviz dot program. Therefore, to draw class diagrams with UMLGraph class you will need to have javadoc and Graphviz installed on your computer.

Maven plugin details

UMLGraph can be easily integrated with existing maven based application. Below is the maven plugin details which needs to be configured:

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
  <configuration>
    <doclet>org.umlgraph.doclet.UmlGraphDoc</doclet>
    <docletArtifact>
      <groupId>org.umlgraph</groupId>
      <artifactId>doclet</artifactId>
      <version>5.1</version>
    </docletArtifact>
    <additionalparam>-horizontal -attributes -enumconstants -enumerations -operations -types -visibility -inferrel -inferdep -hide java.* -inferrel -collpackages java.util.*</additionalparam>
    <show>public</show>
  </configuration>
</plugin>

UMLGraph depends upon Graphviz which must be already installed on the machine. Also in the above maven setting if you configure ‘GRAPHVIZ_HOME’ environment variable you need not specify the docletpath in plugin details.

Steps to configure UMLGraph

Download and install Graphviz
Set GRAPHVIZ_HOME environment variable.
Add the above plugin details in your POM.xml, configure additionalparams per your need.
execute ‘mvn javadoc:javadoc’.

Sample

Below is the sample generated using above configuration over our Pizza entity pizza_class_diagram.png