PlantUML Server

PlantUML Server is a web application to generate UML diagrams on-the-fly.

PlantUML is not affected by the log4j vulnerability.

To know more about PlantUML, please visit https://plantuml.com.

Requirements

• jre/jdk 11 or above
• apache maven 3.0.2 or above

Recommendations

• Jetty 11 or above
• Tomcat 10 or above

How to run the server

Just run:

mvn jetty:run

The server is now listening to http://localhost:8080/plantuml. In this way the server is run on an embedded jetty server.

You can specify the port at which it runs:

mvn jetty:run -Djetty.http.port=9999

How to run the server with Docker

You can run Plantuml with jetty or tomcat container

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 plantuml/plantuml-server:jetty
docker run -d -p 8080:8080 plantuml/plantuml-server:tomcat

The server is now listening to http://localhost:8080.

Read-only container

The jetty container supports read-only files system, you can run the read-only mode with:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 --read-only -v /tmp/jetty plantuml/plantuml-server:jetty

This makes the container compatible with more restricted environment such as OpenShift, just make sure you mount a volume (can be ephemeral) on /tmp/jetty.

Change base URL

To run plantuml using different base url, change the docker-compose.yml file:

environment:
  - BASE_URL=plantuml

And run docker-compose up. This will start a modified version of the image using the base url /plantuml, e.g. http://localhost:8080/plantuml

How to set PlantUML options

You can apply some option to your PlantUML server with environment variable.

If you run the directly the jar:

# NOTE: jetty-runner is deprecated.
# build war file and jetty-runner
mvn package
# start directly
# java $JVM_ARGS -jar jetty-runner.jar $JETTY_ARGS
java -jar target/dependency/jetty-runner.jar --config src/main/config/jetty.xml --port 9999 --path /plantuml target/plantuml.war
# see help for more possible options
java -jar target/dependency/jetty-runner.jar --help

Note: --config src/main/config/jetty.xml is only necessary if you need support for empty path segments in URLs (e.g. for the old proxy)

Alternatively, start over maven and pass the option with -D flag

mvn jetty:run -D THE_ENV_VARIABLE=THE_ENV_VALUE -Djetty.http.port=9999

If you use docker, you can use the -e flag:

docker run -d -p 9999:8080 -e THE_ENV_VARIABLE=THE_ENV_VALUE plantuml/plantuml-server:jetty

You can set all the following variables:

• BASE_URL
  • PlantUML Base URL path
  • Default value: ROOT
• PLANTUML_LIMIT_SIZE
  • Limits image width and height
  • Default value: 4096
• PLANTUML_STATS
  • Set it to on to enable statistics report
  • Default value: off
• HTTP_AUTHORIZATION
  • when calling the proxy endpoint, the value of HTTP_AUTHORIZATION will be used to set the HTTP Authorization header
  • Default value: null
• ALLOW_PLANTUML_INCLUDE
  • Enables !include processing which can read files from the server into diagrams. Files are read relative to the current working directory.
  • Default value: false

Alternate: How to build your docker image

This method uses maven to run the application. That requires internet connectivity. So, you can use following command to create a self-contained docker image that will "just-work".

Note: Generate the WAR (instructions further below) prior to running "docker build"

docker image build -f Dockerfile.jetty -t plantuml-server:local .
docker run -d -p 8080:8080 plantuml-server:local

The server is now listening to http://localhost:8080.

You may specify the port in -p Docker command line argument.

How to generate the war

To build the war, just run:

mvn package

at the root directory of the project to produce plantuml.war in the target/ directory.

NOTE: If you want that the generated war includes the apache-jsp artifact run:

mvn package -Dapache-jsp.scope=compile

If you want to generate the war with java 8 as target just remove the src/test directory and use pom.jdk8.xml.

rm -rf src/test
mvn package -f pom.jdk8.xml [-Dapache-jsp.scope=compile]

Use with reverse-proxy

It is possible to use PlantUML with a reverse proxy.

You can find this and other examples here.