hpp2plantuml - Convert C++ header files to PlantUML

Motivation

The purpose of this tool is to convert C++ header files to a UML representation in PlantUML syntax that can be used to generate diagrams with PlantUML.

PlantUML is a program rendering UML diagrams from plain text inputs using an expressive language.

This package generates the text input to PlantUML from C++ header files. Its ambition is limited but it should produce reasonable conversion for simple class hierarchies. It aims at supporting:

class members with properties (private, method, protected), methods with basic qualifiers (static, abstract),
inheritance relationships,
aggregation relationships (very basic support).
dependency relationships

The package relies on the CppHeaderParser package for parsing of C++ header files.

Usage

The hpp2plantuml package can be used from the command line or as a module in other applications.

Command line

The command line usage is (hpp2plantuml --help):

usage: hpp2plantuml [-h] -i HEADER-FILE [-o FILE] [-d] [-t JINJA-FILE]
                    [--version]

hpp2plantuml tool.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i HEADER-FILE, --input-file HEADER-FILE
                        input file (must be quoted when using wildcards)
  -r, --recursive       Allow to searching recursively for files in subdirectories (double asterisk should be in filepath)
  -o FILE, --output-file FILE
                        output file
  -d, --enable-dependency
                        Extract dependency relationships from method arguments
  -t JINJA-FILE, --template-file JINJA-FILE
                        path to jinja2 template file
  --version             show program's version number and exit

Input files are added using the -i option. Inputs can be full file paths or include wildcards. Note that double quotes are required when using wildcards. The output file is selected with the -o option. The output is a text file following the PlantUML syntax.

For instance, the following command will generate an input file for PlantUML (output.puml) from several header files.

hpp2plantuml -i File_1.hpp -i "include/Helper_*.hpp" -o output.puml

To allow taking files from subfolders, pass -r option with suitable filepath (double asterisk required):

hpp2plantuml -r -i "include/**/Helper_*.hpp" -o output.puml

To customize the output PlantUML file, templates can be used (using the -t parameter):

hpp2plantuml -i File_1.hpp -i "include/Helper_*.hpp" -o output.puml -t template.puml

This will use the template.puml file as template. Templates follow the jinja syntax. For instance, to add a preamble to the PlantUML output, the template file may contain:

{% extends 'default.puml' %}

{% block preamble %}
title "This is a title"
skinparam backgroundColor #EEEBDC
skinparam handwritten true
{% endblock %}

This will inherit from the default template and override the preamble only.

Module

To use as a module, simply import hpp2plantuml. The CreatePlantUMLFile function can then be used to create a PlantUML file from a set of input files. Alternatively, the Diagram object can be used directly to build internal objects (from files or strings). The Diagram.render() method can be used to produce a string output instead of writing to a text file. See the API documentation for more details.

Installation

Using `pip`

The package is available on PyPi and can be installed using pip:

pip install hpp2plantuml

From source

The code uses setuptools, so it can be built using:

python setup.py install

To build the documentation, run:

python setup.py sphinx

To run the tests, run:

python setup.py test

The full documentation is available via:

khoben/hpp2plantuml