mdBook preprocessor to render PlantUML code blocks as images in your book.

• Usage
• Configuration options
• Server configuration
• Troubleshooting rendering issues
• Change log
• Building/installing on Linux

First create the preprocessor in your book.toml file:

[book]
authors = ["Dzjengis Khan"]
multilingual = false
src = "src"
title = "mdBook PlantUML preprocessor"

[preprocessor.plantuml]
plantuml-cmd="plantuml.exe"

The above assumes both the mdbook-preprocessor and the plantuml executable are on your path.

Then simply add a PlantUML code block in your book text:

Some text here

```plantuml
@startuml
A --|> B
@enduml
```

Some more text.

The plantuml code block will be replaced an image reference to an SVG image if possible, or png if PlantUML does not support svg for the requested diagram type (i.e. ditaa).

• plantuml-cmd: Optional command override for PlantUML (defaults to "java -jar plantuml.jar" on Windows and "/usr/bin/plantuml" on Linux). When a URL is provided it is assumed you want to generate the images using a PlantUML server implementation.

Below is an example server configuration.

You can test your server by appending the URL with "/png/SoWkIImgAStDuGh8ISmh2VNrKT3LhR5J24ujAaijud98pKi1IW80". Using the example below this example you'd end up with this URL. When it is working correctly you should see the following image:

[book]
authors = ["Dzjengis Khan"]
multilingual = false
src = "src"
title = "mdBook PlantUML preprocessor"

[preprocessor.plantuml]
plantuml-cmd="http://localhost:8080/plantuml"

mdBook communicates to the preprocessor using stdio. As a result log output from the preprocessor is not printed to the screen. When the preprocessor's markdown error output is insufficient for you it is posibble to redirect logging to the file ./output.log by using the command line switch -l. See the config below for an example:

[book]
authors = ["Sytse Reitsma"]
multilingual = false
src = "src"
title = "mdBook E2E test book"

[preprocessor.plantuml]
plantuml-cmd="http://localhost:8080/plantuml"
command = "mdbook-plantuml -l"

• mdBook from v0.3.2 on deletes the book output directory when rendering starts, causing all generated preprocessor output to be deleted too. The only workaround at the moment is outputting the images to the src directory. This is ugly, but a temporary solution until mdBook allows for other ways of adding resources from a preprocessor.
• More thorough README.md

• PlantUML server support, woot!
• Fixed issue where all markdown after the first PlantUML image was not rendered anymore (preprocessors cannot output HTML apparently).
• Images in nested chapters now have the correct URL (thanks @rafasf).
• Allow logging to file to troubleshoot preprocessor issues.

• Generate SVG image files rather than inline svg
• For ditaa images revert to png, because PlantUML does not support svg for ditaa diagrams (issue #9)

• Generated SVG image is now wrapped in a div with class type 'plantuml'
• More detailed error information when SVG generation failed (including a hint for a possible cause).

• First version

I primarily work on Windows, and rust is not that portable yet apparently.

When you get the following error while installing/building mdbook-plantuml on Linux:

failed to run custom build command for `openssl-sys v0.9.49`

Make sure you have libssl-dev and pkg-config installed:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libssl-dev pkg-config