Basics
DSL rules
- Line breaks are important; long lines can be split with
\
as the last character on the line. - Lines are processed in order.
- Tokens must be separated by whitespace, but the quantity of whitespace/indentation isn’t important.
- Keywords are case-insensitive (e.g. you can use
softwareSystem
orsoftwaresystem
). - Double quote characters (
"..."
) are optional when a property/expression contains no whitespace. - Opening curly brace symbols (
{
) must be on the same line (i.e. the last token of the statement, not on a line of their own). - Closing curly brace symbols (
}
) must be on a line of their own. - Opening/closing braces are only required when adding child content.
- Use
""
as a placeholder for an earlier optional property that you’d like to skip. - Tags are comma separated (e.g.
Tag 1,Tag 2,Tag 3
) - see Structurizr - Notation for details of how tags and styling works.
Workspace rules
In addition, workspaces are subject to the following rules:
- Each view must have a unique “key” (this is generated for you if not specified; automatically generated view keys are not guaranteed to be stable over time, and you will likely lose manual layout information when using them in conjunction with Structurizr Lite/on-premises/cloud).
- Software and people names must be unique.
- Container names must be unique within the context of a software system.
- Component names must be unique within the context of a container.
- Deployment node names must be unique with their parent context.
- Infrastructure node names must be unique with their parent context.
- All relationships from a source element to a destination element must have a unique description.
Implied relationships
!impliedRelationships <true|false>
The !impliedRelationships
keyword provides a way to enable or disable whether implied relationships are created. A value of false
disables implied relationship creation, while true
creates implied relationships between all valid combinations of the parent elements, unless any relationship already exists between them (see Structurizr for Java - Implied relationships - CreateImpliedRelationshipsUnlessAnyRelationshipExistsStrategy for more details).
Constants
The !constant
keyword can be used to define a constant, which can be used with string substitution
!constant <name> <value>
Constant names may only contain the following characters: a-zA-Z0-9-_.
String substitution
String substitution will take place on any text specified within a token using the ${NAME}
syntax, where NAME
corresponds to a constant or an environment variable. For example:
!constant ORGANISATION_NAME "Organisation"
!constant GROUP_NAME "Group"
workspace {
model {
group "${ORGANISATION_NAME} - ${GROUP_NAME}" {
user = person "User"
}
}
}
If a named constant or environment variable cannot be found, the string will not be substituted. Names may only contain the following characters: a-zA-Z0-9-_.
Comments
Comments can be defined as follows:
/*
multi-line comment
*/
/* single-line comment */
# single line comment
// single line comment