UML Modeling – Should External Systems be Included in Class Diagrams?

class-diagrammodelinguml

I want to draw a class diagram that shows the following for an application:

  • An external content management system that publishes some news items.
  • The class that represents the news item in my application.

The question is shall I include the external content management system as a class in my diagram (and maybe give it a different color or add a comment that it is an external component) ?

if the answer is no, what shall I include in the class diagram ? the news item class only ? and how to show the relation between the news item class and the external content management system ?

Best Answer

Your external API (the connection to the content management system) is not a class, it's an interface. As illustrated in this Stack Overflow question, it would look something like this:

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