CompareXML is a fast, lightweight and feature-rich tool that will solve your XML/HTML comparison or diffing needs. its purpose is to compare two instances of Nokogiri::XML::Node
or Nokogiri::XML::NodeSet
for equality or equivalency.
Features
- Fast, light-weight and highly customizable
- Compares XML/HTML documents and document fragments
- Can produce both detailed diffing discrepancies or execute silently
- Has the ability to exclude specific nodes or attributes from all comparisons
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'compare-xml'
And then execute:
bundle
Or install it yourself as:
gem install compare-xml
Using CompareXML is as simple as
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2)
where doc1
and doc2
are instances of Nokogiri::XML::Node
or Nokogiri::XML::NodeSet
.
Example
Suppose you have two files 1.html
and 2.html
that you would like to compare. You could do it as follows:
doc1 = Nokogiri::HTML(open('1.html'))
doc2 = Nokogiri::HTML(open('2.html'))
puts CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2)
The above code will print true
or false
depending on the result of the comparison.
If you are using CompareXML in a script, then you need to require it manually with:
require 'compare-xml'
CompareXML has a variety of options that can be invoked as an optional argument, e.g.:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {collapse_whitespace: false, verbose: true, ...})
-
collapse_whitespace: {true|false}
default:true
show examples ⇨- when
true
, trims and collapses whitespace
- when
-
ignore_attr_order: {true|false}
default:true
show examples ⇨- when
true
, ignores attribute order within tags
- when
-
ignore_attr_content: [string1, string2, ...]
default:[]
show examples ⇨- when provided, ignores all attributes that contain substrings
string
,string2
, etc.
- when provided, ignores all attributes that contain substrings
-
ignore_attrs: [css_selector1, css_selector1, ...]
default:[]
show examples ⇨- when provided, ignores specific attributes using CSS selectors
-
ignore_attrs_by_name: [string1, string2, ...]
default:[]
show examples ⇨- when provided, ignores specific attributes using [String]
-
ignore_comments: {true|false}
default:true
show examples ⇨- when
true
, ignores comments, such as<!-- comment -->
- when
-
ignore_nodes: [css_selector1, css_selector1, ...]
default:[]
show examples ⇨- when provided, ignores specific nodes using CSS selectors
-
ignore_text_nodes: {true|false}
default:false
show examples ⇨- when
true
, ignores all text content within a document
- when
-
verbose: {true|false}
default:false
show examples ⇨- when
true
, instead of a boolean,CompareXML.equivalent?
returns an array of discrepancies.
- when
-
ignore_children {true|false}
defaultfalse
show examples ⇨- when
true
, the subnodes of a node in the xml are ignored
- when
-
force_children {true|false}
defaultfalse
show examples ⇨- when
true
, the subnodes of a node are checked independently of the status of the parent node
- when
-
collapse_whitespace: {true|false}
default:true
When
true
, all text content within the document is trimmed (i.e. space removed from left and right) and whitespace is collapsed (i.e. tabs, new lines, multiple whitespace characters are replaced by a single whitespace).Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {collapse_whitespace: true})
Example: When
true
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="/admin"> SOME TEXT CONTENT </a> <a href="/index"> SOME TEXT CONTENT </a>
Example: When
true
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<html> <title> This is my title </title> </html> <html><title>This is my title</title></html>
-
ignore_attr_order: {true|false}
default:true
When
true
, all attributes are sorted before comparison and only attributes of the same type are compared.Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {ignore_attr_order: true})
Example: When
true
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="/admin" class="button" target="_blank">Link</a> <a class="button" target="_blank" href="/admin">Link</a>
Example: When
false
the above HTML strings are compared as follows:href="admin" != class="button
The comparison of the
<a>
element will stop at this point, since a discrepancy is found.Example: When
true
the following HTML strings are compared as follows:<a href="/admin" class="button" target="_blank">Link</a> <a class="button" target="_blank" href="/admin" rel="nofollow">Link</a> class="button" == class="button" href="/admin" == href="/admin" =! rel="nofollow" target="_blank" == target="_blank"
-
ignore_attr_content: [string1, string2, ...]
default:[]
When provided, ignores all attributes that contain any of the given substrings. Note: types of attributes still have to match (i.e.
<p>
=<p>
,<div>
=<div>
, etc).Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {ignore_attr_content: ['button']})
Example: With
ignore_attr_content: ['button']
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="/admin" id="button_1" class="blue button">Link</a> <a href="/admin" id="button_2" class="info button">Link</a>
Example: With
ignore_attr_content: ['menu']
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a class="menu left" data-scope="abrth$menu" role="side-menu">Link</a> <a class="main menu" data-scope="ergeh$menu" role="main-menu">Link</a>
-
ignore_attrs: [css_selector1, css_selector1, ...]
default:[]
When provided, ignores all attributes that satisfy a particular rule using CSS selectors.
Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {ignore_attrs: ['a[rel="nofollow"]', 'input[type="hidden"']})
Example: With
ignore_attrs: ['a[rel="nofollow"]', 'a[target]']
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="/admin" class="button" target="_blank">Link</a> <a href="/admin" class="button" target="_self" rel="nofollow">Link</a>
Example: With
ignore_attrs: ['a[href^="http"]', 'a[class*="button"]']
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="http://google.ca" class="primary button">Link</a> <a href="https://google.com" class="primary button rounded">Link</a>
-
ignore_attrs_by_name: [string1, string2, ...]
default:false
When provided, ignores all attributes which name is specified in the string array.
Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {ignore_attrs_by_name: ['target'])
Example: With
ignore_attrs_by_name: ['target', 'rel']
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="/admin" class="button" target="_blank">Link</a> <a href="/admin" class="button" target="_self" rel="nofollow">Link</a>
-
ignore_comments: {true|false}
default:true
When
true
, ignores comments, such as<!-- This is a comment -->
.Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {ignore_comments: true})
Example: When
true
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<!-- This is a comment --> <!-- This is another comment -->
Example: When
true
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="/admin"><!-- This is a comment -->Link</a> <a href="/admin">Link</a>
-
ignore_nodes: [css_selector1, css_selector1, ...]
default:[]
When provided, ignores all nodes that satisfy a particular rule using CSS selectors.
Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {ignore_nodes: ['script', 'object']})
Example: With
ignore_nodes: ['a[rel="nofollow"]', 'a[target]']
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="/admin" class="icon" target="_blank">Link 1</a> <a href="/index" class="button" target="_self" rel="nofollow">Link 2</a>
Example: With
ignore_nodes: ['b', 'i']
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="/admin"><i class"icon bulb"></i><b>Warning:</b> Link</a> <a href="/admin"><i class"icon info"></i><b>Message:</b> Link</a>
-
ignore_text_nodes: {true|false}
default:false
When
true
, ignores all text content. Text content is anything that is included between an opening and a closing tag, e.g.<tag>THIS IS TEXT CONTENT</tag>
.Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {ignore_text_nodes: true})
Example: When
true
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<a href="/admin">SOME TEXT CONTENT</a> <a href="/admin">DIFFERENT TEXT CONTENT</a>
Example: When
true
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<i class="icon></i> <b>Warning:</b> <i class="icon> </i> <b>Message:</b>
-
verbose: {true|false}
default:false
When
true
, instead of returning a boolean valueCompareXML.equivalent?
returns an array of all errors encountered when performing a comparison.Warning: When
true
, the comparison takes longer! Not only because more processing is required to produce meaningful differences, but also because in this mode, comparison does NOT stop when a first difference is encountered, because the goal is to capture as many differences as possible.Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {verbose: true})
Example: When
true
given the following HTML strings:CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {verbose: true})
will produce an array shown below.[ { node1: '<title>TITLE</title>', node2: '<title>ANOTHER TITLE</title>', diff1: 'TITLE', diff2: 'ANOTHER TITLE', }, { node1: '<h1>SOME HEADING</h1>', node2: '<h1 id="main">SOME HEADING</h1>', diff1: nil, diff2: 'id="main"', }, { node1: '<a href="/admin" rel="icon">Link</a>', node2: '<a rel="button" href="/admin">Link</a>', diff1: '"rel="icon"', diff2: '"rel="button"', }, { node1: '<cite>Author Name</cite>', node2: nil, diff1: '<cite>Author Name</cite>', diff2: nil, }, { node1: '<p class="footer">FOOTER</p>', node2: '<div class="footer">FOOTER</div>', diff1: 'p', diff2: 'div', } ]
The structure of each hash inside the array is:
node1: [Nokogiri::XML::Node] left node that contains the difference node2: [Nokogiri::XML::Node] right node that contains the difference diff1: [Nokogiri::XML::Node|String] left difference diff2: [Nokogiri::XML::Node|String] right difference
-
ignore_children: {true|false}
default:false
When provided, ignores all subnodes of any node.
Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {ignore_children: true})
Example: With
ignore_children: true
the following HTML strings are considered equal:<body><a href="/admin" class="icon" target="_blank">Link 1</a></body> <body><a href="/index" class="button" target="_self" rel="nofollow">Link 2</a></body>
-
force_children: {true|false}
default:false
When provided, compares all subnodes of any node.
Usage Example:
CompareXML.equivalent?(doc1, doc2, {force_children: true})
- Fork it
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature
) - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature'
) - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature
) - Create new Pull Request
This gem was inspired by Michael B. Klein's gem equivalent-xml
- another excellent tool for XML comparison.
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.