PlantUML Server integration with IDE

Question

Hello, 

Regarding IntelliJ plugin feature request https://github.com/esteinberg/plantuml4idea/issues/119

Use platuml's server (http://plantuml.com/plantuml/uml/IybCBqeio51mLwZcIbJGjLD8uge50000) is very convenient.I always edit plantuml in idea, and copy paste to plantuml's server to generate the link, then change the png to svg, then use this link in markdown.

 

plantuml4idea can generate the svg ,png or form link will be very useful.

 

I would like to ask how is the link generated?

I know I could just POST the content, and then open browser to the location returned in a header, but perhaps I could save you some bandwidth by generating the link myself...

Cheers.

Answer 1

The URL is generated using "PlantUML Text Encoding". You can indeed generate the link yourself. You have to:

• Encode your text in UTF-8
• Compress it using standard Deflate algorithm
• Reencode the result in ASCII using a non-standard transformation (but close to base64) : bytes are grouped by 3, and each group of 3 bytes gives a 4 characters string. That's what the methods encode64() are doing in the PHP or Javascript example. Encoding this with other language should be easy.

See http://plantuml.com/codejavascript.html or http://plantuml.com/codephp.html

If you are using Java, you can even reuse the code from https://github.com/plantuml/plantuml/blob/master/src/net/sourceforge/plantuml/code/TranscoderUtil.java

Tell us if it helps!

Regards,

 

Comments

Perfect, I will use TranscoderUtil.java. Thanks!

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According to https://plantuml.com/text-encoding, simple hex encoding ought to work too, but the sample on the page fails.