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Umple Tools

This page describes how to use Umple, either online, as a downloadable command-line compiler, or in various integrated development environments.

Umple files conventionally use the extension .ump. You use one or more of the following tools to edit, view and compile sets of .ump files.

  • UmpleOnline. UmpleOnline allows you to instantly experiment with Umple on the web. You can explore examples or create your own and save them in the "cloud". You can generate diagrams, code in several languages and several other outputs. The UmpleOnline section of this User manual describes how to use UmpleOnline. Note that UmpleOnline can be run locally on your machine by using a Docker image. See the DockerHub page for information. Note that a completely rewritten experimental version of UmpleOnline is avalable for early exploration.

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  • Visual Studio Code plugin. This plugin, available in the VSCode marketplace, allows full-featured editing and compilation of Umple, including displaying of diagrams.. It includes Language Server Protocol support. See also the VSCode page in this user manual.

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  • BBEdit tool support. See the BBEdit page in this user manual.. It includes Language Server Protocol support.

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  • Zed text editor plugin. See the Zed page in this user manual.. It includes Language Server Protocol support.

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  • Neovim text editor plugin. See the Neovim page in this user manual.. It includes Language Server Protocol support.

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  • Sublime text editor support. See the Sublime page in this user manual.. It includes Language Server Protocol support.

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  • Command-line based compiler You can use Umple from the command line. The following are some ways to install it:
    • Download the latest version from continuous integration This is the same version as in UmpleOnline and is typically updated a few times each month. After downloading, run using Java 11 or later using
      java -jar umple.jar <options> <filename.ump> ...

    • Download the latest official release version. This is typically updated 1-4 times per year and should be chosen if you prefer stability over a period of time.

    • Homebrew installation: Run
      brew install umple
      on a Mac (also available for Linux). This will install the latest stable release, and will update automatically after any new release. Once installed, run as
      umple <options> <filename.ump> ...
      Note that homebrew will try to install openjdk as a dependency in homebrew first (if not already there). If you have Java installed outside of homebrew, you can avoid an unneeded installation by specifying --ignore-depenencies.

    • Windows versions on chocolatey and Linux versions under apt may be available.

    The command line compiler has numerous options, including:
    • -g lang or --generate lang : Specify the output language (Java is the default; to ensure no output is generated, specify the word 'nothing' literally): Java,RTCpp, Php, Ruby,SQL,Json,Ecore,TextUml,Scxml Yuml, etc.
    • --help : Display the help message (describing the complete set of options)
    • --path : If a output language is specified using option -g, output source code will be placed to path
    • -u code : Specify a valid tiny umple snippet directly on the command line (can be used to add extra information to the files supplied as arguments).
    • -v, --version : Print out the current Umple version number
    • -c - : Compile the generated code (i.e. go directly from Umple to an executable system in Java, or to verify the syntax of generated PhP)

    The command line compiler can handle thousands of files and millions of lines of Umple code if needed (Umple is written in itself, demonstrating this works well). The command line compiler can be incorporated into product toolchains using technology like Gradle or ant.


     
  • Eclipse plugin To use Umple with Eclipse, you need to load an Umple Eclipse plugin. This can be obtained by pointing Eclipse at our update site. It has not been maintained recently and support may be dropped.
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  • Docker image for UmpleOnline: This allows you to run UmpleOnline on your own computer.

    Requirement: Docker installed on your computer.

    Umple provides a Docker image of Umpleonline that allows you to explore all the features of Umple through a web browser, with the server running locally on your computer. To use this, do the following after installing Docker. Further information can be found on Umple's Docker Hub page

    • Make sure Docker is actually running on your computer
    • Pull the latest image (do this every time, so you get any changes):
        docker pull umple/umpleonline
      
    • Create a directory on your local machine to store your data (or reuse one that you had created previously for this purpose). In the example below we will use '~/umpledata'. As the image runs, a subdirectory of this will be created for each web session, containing the .ump files being edited, and the generated outputs. You can use the Umpleonline bookmarking capability to create a subdirectory within your local-machine directory that has a fixed name; you you can then access this repeatedly to keep working on the same models.
       
    • In a terminal (console), invoke the image (you can change the first 8000 to be another port both here and in the next instruction if you prefer):
        docker run --rm -ti -p 8000:8000 -v ~/umpledata:/var/www/ump umple/umpleonline >/dev/null
      
    • In a web browser, go to the following link: http://localhost:8000/umple.php
       
    • To quit the image: a) If started as above in Linux or Mac, hit control-c; or b) run 'docker ps' to find the name of the running image and kill it using 'docker kill image'.

    You can also accomplish the above by downloading and installing our script called udock and passing it the optional argument -d {dir} for your local storage directory (otherwise data will be stored in a temporary directory)

    More information about Umple in Docker can be found at https://umple.org/docker

    New Docker images are produced for each release of Umple, with occasional interim images. A list of Docker images can be found at the Umpleonline DockerHub site. The image tagged 'latest' will be downloaded by default.