2 posts tagged with "zenuml"

The integration doc says "the client calls the API, the API validates and responds" — four words, zero contracts, and the onboarding engineer asks "with what headers, in what order, and what if auth fails?" The code has the truth; the wiki has a paragraph. An API that can't be read as a transcript is an API nobody can safely operate.

Quick answer: document API flows in Confluence as Mermaid — sequenceDiagram for request/response order, packet-beta for wire-format frames, ZenUML for branch-heavy async flows — rendered by Mermaid Plus for Confluence. Each diagram type answers a different reader: what order, what's on the wire, what branches. This post gives you three copy-paste examples.

Sequence diagrams die in Confluence in one of two ways: someone draws one in a diagramming tool, exports a PNG, pastes it into a page — and three sprints later the flow has changed but the image has not. Or someone writes the flow as prose ("the client calls the order service, and if payment is approved…"), which is accurate but impossible to read under time pressure.

ZenUML splits the difference: the diagram is code, so it edits like code and renders like a diagram — branches, error paths, and parallel work included. This guide shows the syntax with copy-paste examples you can drop into Confluence today.