Looking for a web based diff component

Question

In a content management system, moderators have to approve changes to existing articles. Currently the system shows the old and the revised version of the text in plain text. It is a pain to find the actual differences.

In GoogleDocs, there is a 'Compare revisions' feature which highlights the differences between two documents.

If there a free component out there that does the same thing?

If not, would you write such a component in JavaScript or on the server side?

All the usual diff tools are desktop applications.

Answer 1

If you're working with PHP, you may find SimpleDIFF to be helpful.

Answer 2

jsdifflib looks like an interesting javascript-based client side library. I would lean strongly toward a client-side implementation if it provided the features that you needed. Why tax your servers on presentation logic when you're already handing the client the data anyway?

Answer 3

John Resig wrote one in JavaScript that looks interesting.

Here it is.

Answer 4

Try Pretty Diff tool. It is based upon jsdifflib, but is enhanced to highlight per character differences and rebuilt for speed. It also compares minified code to unminified code. It is entirely written in JavaScript and supports JavaScript, CSS, and XML/XHTML input.

http://mailmarkup.org/prettydiff/prettydiff.html