Can't use $link property

[martinicr]

Hi, when trying to put the $link property in several components such as AzureServiceFabric, PlantUML diagram generation fails. Can't see in the documentation of this project if this property is supported or not.

[Potherca]

Hi! I am not familiar with $link. Could you post an example diagram of how it is used, or a link to the relevant PlantUML documentation?

[martinicr]

Go to this page. Then look for the $link property. You will see how this property can be used in several C4 components.

[Potherca]

I think I understand what you mean... Are you trying to use $link like this: AzureServiceFabric(Alias, "Label "Technology", $link="https://example.com")?

Or to place it in a more real world context:

@startuml
!$AzurePuml='https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plantuml-stdlib/Azure-PlantUML/release/2-1/dist'
!include $AzurePuml/AzureCommon.puml
!include $AzurePuml/Compute/AzureServiceFabric.puml

AzureServiceFabric(Alias, "Label "Technology", $link="https://example.com")
@enduml

[martinicr]

You right and sorry for my lack of details on this.

In regular C4 PlantUML, you can add the $link property to several definitions such as this one:

System(twitter, "Twitter", $link="https://github.com/plantuml-stdlib/C4-PlantUML")

So, I tried to do the same with the AzureServiceFabric definition, but I got an error everytime I exported the diagram. I can't see any reference to the $link property in the Azure-PlantUML documentation so I thought chances are this is not supported for this kind of elements.

[Potherca]

No need for apologies 👍

You are correct, in C4 there was a change in the code to go from ordered parameters¹ to named parameters², as that provides more flexibility³

That functionality has not been implemented in this project, hence the errors.

I could make a ticket to look into implementing such things here (which is a good idea in itself) but I can't really give a timeline in which it would be implemented.

Footnotes

1. i.e. Foo(a,b,c) ↩

2. i.e. Foo($a='a', $b='b', $c='c') ↩

3. Such making easier to support optional parameters and not requiring a fixed order parameters need to be provided in. ↩