Best way to compare 2 XML documents in Java

Question

I'm trying to write an automated test of an application that basically translates a custom message format into an XML message and sends it out the other end. I've got a good set of input/output message pairs so all I need to do is send the input messages in and listen for the XML message to come out the other end.

When it comes time to compare the actual output to the expected output I'm running into some problems. My first thought was just to do string comparisons on the expected and actual messages. This doens't work very well because the example data we have isn't always formatted consistently and there are often times different aliases used for the XML namespace (and sometimes namespaces aren't used at all.)

I know I can parse both strings and then walk through each element and compare them myself and this wouldn't be too difficult to do, but I get the feeling there's a better way or a library I could leverage.

So, boiled down, the question is:

Given two Java Strings which both contain valid XML how would you go about determining if they are semantically equivalent? Bonus points if you have a way to determine what the differences are.

Answer 1

Below code works for me

String xml1 = ...
String xml2 = ...
XMLUnit.setIgnoreWhitespace(true);
XMLUnit.setIgnoreAttributeOrder(true);
XMLAssert.assertXMLEqual(actualxml, xmlInDb);

Answer 2

This will compare full string XMLs (reformatting them on the way). It makes it easy to work with your IDE (IntelliJ, Eclipse), cos you just click and visually see the difference in the XML files.

import org.apache.xml.security.c14n.CanonicalizationException;
import org.apache.xml.security.c14n.Canonicalizer;
import org.apache.xml.security.c14n.InvalidCanonicalizerException;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.bootstrap.DOMImplementationRegistry;
import org.w3c.dom.ls.DOMImplementationLS;
import org.w3c.dom.ls.LSSerializer;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.StringReader;

import static org.apache.xml.security.Init.init;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;

public class XmlUtils {
    static {
        init();
    }

    public static String toCanonicalXml(String xml) throws InvalidCanonicalizerException, ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, CanonicalizationException, IOException {
        Canonicalizer canon = Canonicalizer.getInstance(Canonicalizer.ALGO_ID_C14N_OMIT_COMMENTS);
        byte canonXmlBytes[] = canon.canonicalize(xml.getBytes());
        return new String(canonXmlBytes);
    }

    public static String prettyFormat(String input) throws TransformerException, ParserConfigurationException, IOException, SAXException, InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException, ClassNotFoundException {
        InputSource src = new InputSource(new StringReader(input));
        Element document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(src).getDocumentElement();
        Boolean keepDeclaration = input.startsWith("<?xml");
        DOMImplementationRegistry registry = DOMImplementationRegistry.newInstance();
        DOMImplementationLS impl = (DOMImplementationLS) registry.getDOMImplementation("LS");
        LSSerializer writer = impl.createLSSerializer();
        writer.getDomConfig().setParameter("format-pretty-print", Boolean.TRUE);
        writer.getDomConfig().setParameter("xml-declaration", keepDeclaration);
        return writer.writeToString(document);
    }

    public static void assertXMLEqual(String expected, String actual) throws ParserConfigurationException, IOException, SAXException, CanonicalizationException, InvalidCanonicalizerException, TransformerException, IllegalAccessException, ClassNotFoundException, InstantiationException {
        String canonicalExpected = prettyFormat(toCanonicalXml(expected));
        String canonicalActual = prettyFormat(toCanonicalXml(actual));
        assertEquals(canonicalExpected, canonicalActual);
    }
}

I prefer this to XmlUnit because the client code (test code) is cleaner.

Answer 3

I required the same functionality as requested in the main question. As I was not allowed to use any 3rd party libraries, I have created my own solution basing on @Archimedes Trajano solution.

Following is my solution.

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.nio.charset.Charset;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Map.Entry;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;

import org.junit.Assert;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;

/**
 * Asserts for asserting XML strings.
 */
public final class AssertXml {

    private AssertXml() {
    }

    private static Pattern NAMESPACE_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("xmlns:(ns\\d+)=\"(.*?)\"");

    /**
     * Asserts that two XML are of identical content (namespace aliases are ignored).
     * 
     * @param expectedXml expected XML
     * @param actualXml actual XML
     * @throws Exception thrown if XML parsing fails
     */
    public static void assertEqualXmls(String expectedXml, String actualXml) throws Exception {
        // Find all namespace mappings
        Map<String, String> fullnamespace2newAlias = new HashMap<String, String>();
        generateNewAliasesForNamespacesFromXml(expectedXml, fullnamespace2newAlias);
        generateNewAliasesForNamespacesFromXml(actualXml, fullnamespace2newAlias);

        for (Entry<String, String> entry : fullnamespace2newAlias.entrySet()) {
            String newAlias = entry.getValue();
            String namespace = entry.getKey();
            Pattern nsReplacePattern = Pattern.compile("xmlns:(ns\\d+)=\"" + namespace + "\"");
            expectedXml = transletaNamespaceAliasesToNewAlias(expectedXml, newAlias, nsReplacePattern);
            actualXml = transletaNamespaceAliasesToNewAlias(actualXml, newAlias, nsReplacePattern);
        }

        // nomralize namespaces accoring to given mapping

        DocumentBuilder db = initDocumentParserFactory();

        Document expectedDocuemnt = db.parse(new ByteArrayInputStream(expectedXml.getBytes(Charset.forName("UTF-8"))));
        expectedDocuemnt.normalizeDocument();

        Document actualDocument = db.parse(new ByteArrayInputStream(actualXml.getBytes(Charset.forName("UTF-8"))));
        actualDocument.normalizeDocument();

        if (!expectedDocuemnt.isEqualNode(actualDocument)) {
            Assert.assertEquals(expectedXml, actualXml); //just to better visualize the diffeences i.e. in eclipse
        }
    }


    private static DocumentBuilder initDocumentParserFactory() throws ParserConfigurationException {
        DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        dbf.setNamespaceAware(false);
        dbf.setCoalescing(true);
        dbf.setIgnoringElementContentWhitespace(true);
        dbf.setIgnoringComments(true);
        DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
        return db;
    }

    private static String transletaNamespaceAliasesToNewAlias(String xml, String newAlias, Pattern namespacePattern) {
        Matcher nsMatcherExp = namespacePattern.matcher(xml);
        if (nsMatcherExp.find()) {
            xml = xml.replaceAll(nsMatcherExp.group(1) + "[:]", newAlias + ":");
            xml = xml.replaceAll(nsMatcherExp.group(1) + "=", newAlias + "=");
        }
        return xml;
    }

    private static void generateNewAliasesForNamespacesFromXml(String xml, Map<String, String> fullnamespace2newAlias) {
        Matcher nsMatcher = NAMESPACE_PATTERN.matcher(xml);
        while (nsMatcher.find()) {
            if (!fullnamespace2newAlias.containsKey(nsMatcher.group(2))) {
                fullnamespace2newAlias.put(nsMatcher.group(2), "nsTr" + (fullnamespace2newAlias.size() + 1));
            }
        }
    }

}

It compares two XML strings and takes care of any mismatching namespace mappings by translating them to unique values in both input strings.

Can be fine tuned i.e. in case of translation of namespaces. But for my requirements just does the job.

Answer 4

AssertJ 1.4+ has specific assertions to compare XML content:

String expectedXml = "<foo />";
String actualXml = "<bar />";
assertThat(actualXml).isXmlEqualTo(expectedXml);

Here is the Documentation

Answer 5

Building on Tom's answer, here's an example using XMLUnit v2.

It uses these maven dependencies

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.xmlunit</groupId>
        <artifactId>xmlunit-core</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.0</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.xmlunit</groupId>
        <artifactId>xmlunit-matchers</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.0</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>

..and here's the test code

import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;
import static org.xmlunit.matchers.CompareMatcher.isIdenticalTo;
import org.xmlunit.builder.Input;
import org.xmlunit.input.WhitespaceStrippedSource;

public class SomeTest extends XMLTestCase {
    @Test
    public void test() {
        String result = "<root></root>";
        String expected = "<root>  </root>";

        // ignore whitespace differences
        // https://github.com/xmlunit/user-guide/wiki/Providing-Input-to-XMLUnit#whitespacestrippedsource
        assertThat(result, isIdenticalTo(new WhitespaceStrippedSource(Input.from(expected).build())));

        assertThat(result, isIdenticalTo(Input.from(expected).build())); // will fail due to whitespace differences
    }
}

The documentation that outlines this is https://github.com/xmlunit/xmlunit#comparing-two-documents

Answer 6

Using JExamXML with java application

    import com.a7soft.examxml.ExamXML;
    import com.a7soft.examxml.Options;

       .................

       // Reads two XML files into two strings
       String s1 = readFile("orders1.xml");
       String s2 = readFile("orders.xml");

       // Loads options saved in a property file
       Options.loadOptions("options");

       // Compares two Strings representing XML entities
       System.out.println( ExamXML.compareXMLString( s1, s2 ) );