Is it possible to include JSON as an external source

Question

Including JSON data in a use case diagram as a basic element works fine, However I would like to include the data by referencing an external file rather than embedding the code. I want to do this to have a single source of the JSON (in git).

I imagine it would look something like:

json JSON {link to external file[url/externalfile.json]}

Please ignore my use of incorrect parenthesis. url syntax etc.

Is this possible now using include files, or could this be developed?

Answer 1

The preprocessor has now a %load_json() function that you might find useful. See http://www.forum.plantuml.net/11406/loadjson-function and https://plantuml.com/en/preprocessing#291cabbe982ff775

Note that we are currently renaming %loadJSON() to %load_json() so you may have to try both syntaxes depending on your PlantUML version.

Does it help?

Comments

Thanks for the response.

Yes %load_json is perfect.I can get it to work showing the json data structure using:

!$remote_json = %load_json("https://gitlab.com/......../example.json")

label l [
=Title:
{{json
$remote_json
}}
]

But I would also like to display it as tabular json as in the examples at the bottom of this page https://plantuml.com/json

json JSON {
   "fruit":"Apple",
   "size":"Large",
   "color": ["Red", "Green"]
}

I tried using the syntax

json TITLE $remote_json

But I get a syntax error. I know that the json is valid.

Any ideas on how to show the basic tabular json with %load_json?

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Thanks for the report.

This has been fixed in last snapshot and on the online server.

Tell us if you find other issues!

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Many thanks for the prompt solution. Just one more thing: json data loaded using %load_json doesn't work if the root is an array rather than an object.

Being able to show json data graphically from a version controlled solution such as a remote git repo, is fantastic for maintaining documentation.

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Hello T.,

FYI that is now fixed on v1.2024.8:

• Release v1.2024.8 · plantuml/plantuml (github.com)

- Thanks PlantUML team for your work.

Ref.:

• feat: feat: allow all JSON Values on JSON Entity by arnaudroques · Pull Request #1970 · plantuml/plantuml (github.com)

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Thanks for the update. It works great.