How do I export the elkt generated diagram to svg or png?

[parrotcar00]

How do I export a elk diagram that I created in the interactive editor, to svg, png or some other file format?

I tried searching in the repo but couldn't find anything.

[soerendomroes]

Well, you cannot. At least not directly, since it was not made for this. However, elk-cli does exactly that.

[parrotcar00]

I see that elk-cli expects json input. Is there anyway I can supply elkt and get the output? Or some cli way to convert elkt to json so that I can use elk-cli?

[Eddykasp]

The elk live demonstrator has a converter tool that you can use.

[parrotcar00]

Thanks that works!
This means if I wanted to generate diagrams from elkt source in a headless fashion, the best way to do this right now would be:
elkt source -> use docker elk-live image to convert to json format -> elk-cli -> svg output.
Let me know if there is a better way overall.

[Eddykasp]

The ELK tools don't really provide a better way since it isn't intended to be used for rendering. There is a PR in elkjs which might be interesting for you to look into.

To draw elkt graphs you may also want to look at klighd-vscode which has a vscode extension and a cli tool that can create renderings of elkt graphs and can also save these as svgs. I'm not sure there is currently an option to directly create svgs with only a command line invocation, but that is a functionality that I could imagine being built at some point if there is interest.

[parrotcar00]

I think eclipse ELK is a fantastic DSL and should be used more often by people :)
One of the things that can be improved is having a cli version of the dsl.
Some advantages:

1. Easier to run in a headless fashion
2. Compilation errors are immediately seen on the terminal when the cli is invoked.

In my view the cli should allow either elkt or json input and output the svg/png file that we see in the interactive editor.
Since elk is written in java, maybe the cli should be a thin wrapper around the elk java library? This would make it the authoritative source of truth for parsing all elk sources.