yUML: UML diagrams in plain text!

I’m a huge fan of UML diagrams. I like visualizing stuff so drawing a quick class, use case or activity diagram helps me get my ideas straight when working on a project. Most UML tools out there are too expensive, crappy and/or bloated.

While Google-ing around for UML tools I came across yUML which is a very awesome tool which lets you create UML diagrams in plain text and embed them in HTML!

yUML works by passing in the plain text description of your diagram in a GET request. There are URLs for Activity, Use Case and Class diagrams. Then you can use this URL as the source of an img tag to embed it in any application which renders HTML or on any application that can display images from a URL.

The plain text of the diagram above is:

(start)->(Go to yuml.me)->(Write UML in plain text)->(Copy generated URL into blog)->(Display generated diagram)->(end)

The URL to get the diagram is:

http://yuml.me/diagram/activity/(start)->(Go to yuml.me)->(Write UML in plain text)->(Copy generated URL into blog)->(Display generated diagram)->(end)

Note: The first time you request the URL with your diagram yUML will take a few seconds to respond. Afterwards your diagram will be cached an it won’t take that long to render anymore.