Structurizr

Structurizr is a collection of tooling to help you visualise, document and explore your software architecture using the C4 model.

Sign up for free

Software architecture diagrams as code

Structurizr is an implementation of the System Context, Container and Component diagrams from Simon Brown's C4 model, supplemented with a dynamic diagram and a deployment diagram. Structurizr does not provide a "drag and drop" editor to create diagrams. Instead, you create a software architecture model using code and upload it via the web API. Here's a simple example using Java:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    Workspace workspace = new Workspace("Getting Started", "This is a model of my software system.");
    Model model = workspace.getModel();

    Person user = model.addPerson("User", "A user of my software system.");
    SoftwareSystem softwareSystem = model.addSoftwareSystem("Software System", "My software system.");
    user.uses(softwareSystem, "Uses");

    ViewSet viewSet = workspace.getViews();
    SystemContextView contextView = viewSet.createSystemContextView(softwareSystem, "SystemContext", "An example of a System Context diagram.");
    contextView.addAllSoftwareSystems();
    contextView.addAllPeople();

    Styles styles = viewSet.getConfiguration().getStyles();
    styles.addElementStyle(Tags.SOFTWARE_SYSTEM).background("#1168bd").color("#ffffff");
    styles.addElementStyle(Tags.PERSON).background("#08427b").color("#ffffff").shape(Shape.Person);

    StructurizrClient structurizrClient = new StructurizrClient("key", "secret");
    structurizrClient.putWorkspace(25441, workspace);
}

And here's the resulting diagram when you open it in Structurizr, where the layout of the diagrams can be modified.

A diagram key is automatically generated for you, based upon the styles defined in the model.

The following diagram types are supported.

In essence, Structurizr is an implementation of an executable architecture description language, a simple domain-specific language to describe static structure, using code. There are open source client libraries on GitHub for Java and the .NET platform, which include static analysis features to help you extract components from your codebase. If you integrate this with your continuous integration/build process, your diagrams stay up to date. See Why use code to create a software architecture model? for more information.

Software documentation as Markdown or AsciiDoc

Explore your software architecture model

Once you have a model of your software system, extracted from your code using static analysis techniques, you can additionally visualise the model in a number of different ways. Structurizr provides some explorations to help you explore the elements and their relationships in the model.

Far too many teams allow their codebases to grow without having an insight into the structure of the code. The result is often the proverbial "big ball of mud"; a codebase that is tangled, hard to understand, hard to work with and hard to change. Visualising the structure of your code is the first step towards improving it.