Export not diagrams, but just models for plantuml (and maybe others diagraming tool)

[b0g3r]

One of the key benefit of structurizr for me is a model part, structured definition of architecture of a project, and how it linked through all the diagrams, making changes easy. I'm also a big fan of plantuml sequence diagrams and readability/flexibility they give for use-case descriptions.

For the current project we use combined approach, structurizr for C4-like diagrams, and custom plantuml sequence and activity diagrams for complex communications between containers and entities. But with this approach we inevitably lose some of the benefits of common model we have. I'm thinking maybe it would be a good idea by using structurizr-cli export -format plantuml to export not only diagrams, but the entities itself, so later they can be re-used through !include in plantuml.

So something like

@startuml
Container(c1, "Single-Page Application", "JavaScript and Angular", "Provides all of the Internet banking functionality to customers via their web browser.")

Container_Boundary(b, "API Application")
  Component(c2, "Sign In Controller", "Spring MVC Rest Controller", "Allows users to sign in to the Internet Banking System.")
  Component(c3, "Security Component", "Spring Bean", "Provides functionality Related to signing in, changing passwords, etc.")
Boundary_End()

ContainerDb(c4, "Database", "Relational Database Schema", "Stores user registration information, hashed authentication credentials, access logs, etc.")
@enduml

That I later can include into my scheme as a model definition