I have a requirement to compare two XML documents and report differences. String comparison is not sufficient as I want to be able to say that:
<Foo/>
is the same as
<Foo></Foo>
Anyone used a library they would recommend?
+1
A:
There's the cunningly named xmldiff which I've used before with success.
XMLUnit also works well. It's primarily for use in unit tests (alongside JUnit).
Brian Agnew
2009-07-29 10:39:28
I must be not looking in the right places, but i can't find any files for xmldiff.
Stroboskop
2009-07-29 10:59:48
It's some time since I used it. I'm wondering if I did a direct CVS checkout
Brian Agnew
2009-07-29 11:17:20
Going with XMLUnit, which I know vaguely
Paul McKenzie
2009-07-30 11:33:37
A:
or try diffxml:
The standard Unix tools diff and patch are used to find the differences between text files and to apply the differences. These tools operate on a line by line basis using well-studied methods for computing the longest common subsequence (LCS).
Using these tools on hierarchically structured data (XML etc) leads to sub-optimal results, as they are incapable of recognizing the tree-based structure of these files.
This project aims to provide Open Source XML diff and patch utilities which operate on the hierarchical structure of XML documents.
pageman
2009-07-29 10:46:27
The website says " The current version is 0.95 Beta. Please note that this is an beta release; it is not yet production quality." Which makes it a bit difficult to justify in the corporate world.
Paul McKenzie
2009-07-29 10:54:24
A:
What I always do is format both sides of the XML (xmllint -format) and diff the results.
reinierpost
2009-07-29 10:48:18