Take a tour of Structurizr

Create diagrams using code

Structurizr does not provide an online "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.

Workspace workspace = new Workspace("My model", "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, "context", "A simple example...");
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");

StructurizrClient structurizrClient = new StructurizrClient("key", "secret");
structurizrClient.putWorkspace(1234, workspace);

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

In essence, Structurizr is an implementation of an 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 the About page for more information on "software architecture as code".

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Create diagrams using text

Alternatively, if you just want to sketch something out, Structurizr Express lets you create a single software architecture diagram without writing code.

System Context diagram Container diagram Component diagram

Create documentation with Markdown

The code doesn't tell the whole story, so in addition to static and dynamic diagrams, Structurizr also provides support for lightweight supplementary technical documentation based upon the "software guidebook" from Simon Brown's Software Architecture for Developers book.

The documentation is a collection of Markdown documents, one per section, which are rendered in the web browser. This Markdown content is uploaded in a workspace along with the software architecture model, which makes it easy to embed diagrams from that workspace.

Explorations

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.