XML Files
When comparing files in XML mode (set with the CLI option --mode=xml), you can view the comparison report in XML format only (--output-mode=xml). To understand how differences are reported in XML format, let's assume that the following two XML files must be compared side-by-side.
<book id="1"> | <book id="2"> |
It can be seen that there are two differences: (i) in the value of the book element's id attribute in line 1; and (ii) in the text content of the author element in line 2.
In DiffDog Server, you can run the command below to compare these two XML files and receive a comparison report in XML format.
diffdogcmdlclient diff file1.xml file2.xml --mode=xml --output-mode=xml --output-file=report.xml
•The --mode option treats the compared files as XML (not as text or binary).
•The --output-mode option for XML (mode) comparisons must be XML.
•The --output-file option specifies the path to the generated report file.
•Since there is no --quiet=true option, the comparison report will be generated to the command line as well as to an output file. See "Report formats" in the topic Comparison Results.
XML report
In the XML report produced after running the comparison, the differences are reported as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- Differencing export generated by Altova DiffDog Server -->
<diff_result>
<diff_info comparison_mode="xml">
<source_left name="c:\file1.xml" uri="file:///c:/file1.xml"/>
<source_right name="c:\file2.xml" uri="file:///c:/file2.xml"/>
</diff_info>
<xml_diff>
<left_location>
<parent xpath="/book"/>
<position>1</position>
</left_location>
<right_location>
<parent xpath="/book"/>
<position>1</position>
</right_location>
<left_content>
<attribute id="1"/>
</left_content>
<right_content>
<attribute id="2"/>
</right_content>
</xml_diff>
<xml_diff>
<left_location>
<parent xpath="/book/author"/>
<position>1</position>
</left_location>
<right_location>
<parent xpath="/book/author"/>
<position>1</position>
</right_location>
<left_content>
<element>Mark Twain</element>
</left_content>
<right_content>
<element>Franz Kafka</element>
</right_content>
</xml_diff>
</diff_result>
The following points describe the XML report:
•The diff_info element at the top supplies information about files that were compared, including the comparison mode used and the paths of the compared files. This element occurs only once. (The comparison_mode attribute indicates the value supplied for the --mode option at the command line—or the option's default value if no value was supplied at the command line.)
•The xml_diff elements itemize the XML differences found. Their left_location and right_location child elements, each locate the parent node of the node containing the difference.
•The parent node has an xpath attribute that gives an XPath locator expression of the parent node, and the position element gives the position of the parent within its context nodeset.
•In the first difference (see the source XML files at the top of this topic), the node containing the difference is the id attribute of the single book element. So the parent of the @id node is book, that is, the /book element at position 1 (since there is only one book element; it is the single, root element of the document).
•In the second difference (see the source XML files at the top of this topic), the node containing the difference is the text node of the single author child of the book element. The parent of this text node, therefore, is the author node at position 1 in the nodeset returned by the locator expression /book/author.
•The left_content and right_content elements, respectively, contain the nodes that are different in each xml_diff. In our example above, notice that, in the first xml_diff, the node that is different is the id attribute of /book, whereas in the second xml_diff, it is the text content of the author element that is different.