# PlantUML & GitLab > [Introduced][ce-8537] in GitLab 8.16. When [PlantUML](http://plantuml.com) integration is enabled and configured in GitLab we are able to create simple diagrams in AsciiDoc and Markdown documents created in snippets, wikis, and repos. ## PlantUML Server Before you can enable PlantUML in GitLab; you need to set up your own PlantUML server that will generate the diagrams. ### Docker With Docker, you can just run a container like this: `docker run -d --name plantuml -p 8080:8080 plantuml/plantuml-server:tomcat` The **PlantUML URL** will be the hostname of the server running the container. ### Debian/Ubuntu Installing and configuring your own PlantUML server is easy in Debian/Ubuntu distributions using Tomcat. First you need to create a `plantuml.war` file from the source code: ``` sudo apt-get install graphviz openjdk-7-jdk git-core maven git clone https://github.com/plantuml/plantuml-server.git cd plantuml-server mvn package ``` The above sequence of commands will generate a WAR file that can be deployed using Tomcat: ``` sudo apt-get install tomcat7 sudo cp target/plantuml.war /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/plantuml.war sudo chown tomcat7:tomcat7 /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/plantuml.war sudo service tomcat7 restart ``` Once the Tomcat service restarts the PlantUML service will be ready and listening for requests on port 8080: ``` http://localhost:8080/plantuml ``` you can change these defaults by editing the `/etc/tomcat7/server.xml` file. ## GitLab You need to enable PlantUML integration from Settings under Admin Area. To do that, login with an Admin account and do following: - in GitLab go to **Admin Area** and then **Settings** - scroll to bottom of the page until PlantUML section - check **Enable PlantUML** checkbox - set the PlantUML instance as **PlantUML URL** ## Creating Diagrams With PlantUML integration enabled and configured, we can start adding diagrams to our AsciiDoc snippets, wikis and repos using delimited blocks: - **Markdown**
    ```plantuml
    Bob -> Alice : hello
    Alice -> Bob : Go Away
    ```
- **AsciiDoc** ``` [plantuml, format="png", id="myDiagram", width="200px"] ---- Bob->Alice : hello Alice -> Bob : Go Away ---- ``` - **reStructuredText** ``` .. plantuml:: :caption: Caption with **bold** and *italic* Bob -> Alice: hello Alice -> Bob: Go Away ``` You can also use the `uml::` directive for compatibility with [sphinxcontrib-plantuml](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/sphinxcontrib-plantuml), but please note that we currently only support the `caption` option. The above blocks will be converted to an HTML img tag with source pointing to the PlantUML instance. If the PlantUML server is correctly configured, this should render a nice diagram instead of the block: ![PlantUML Integration](../img/integration/plantuml-example.png) Inside the block you can add any of the supported diagrams by PlantUML such as [Sequence](http://plantuml.com/sequence-diagram), [Use Case](http://plantuml.com/use-case-diagram), [Class](http://plantuml.com/class-diagram), [Activity](http://plantuml.com/activity-diagram-legacy), [Component](http://plantuml.com/component-diagram), [State](http://plantuml.com/state-diagram), and [Object](http://plantuml.com/object-diagram) diagrams. You do not need to use the PlantUML diagram delimiters `@startuml`/`@enduml` as these are replaced by the AsciiDoc `plantuml` block. Some parameters can be added to the AsciiDoc block definition: - *format*: Can be either `png` or `svg`. Note that `svg` is not supported by all browsers so use with care. The default is `png`. - *id*: A CSS id added to the diagram HTML tag. - *width*: Width attribute added to the img tag. - *height*: Height attribute added to the img tag. Markdown does not support any parameters and will always use PNG format. [ce-8537]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests/8537