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

The latest version of XMLUnit can help the job of asserting two XML are equal. Also XMLUnit.setIgnoreWhitespace() and XMLUnit.setIgnoreAttributeOrder() may be necessary to the case in question.

See working code of a simple example of XML Unit use below.

import org.custommonkey.xmlunit.DetailedDiff;
import org.custommonkey.xmlunit.XMLUnit;
import org.junit.Assert;

public class TestXml {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String result = "<abc             attr=\"value1\"                title=\"something\">            </abc>";
        // will be ok
        assertXMLEquals("<abc attr=\"value1\" title=\"something\"></abc>", result);
    }

    public static void assertXMLEquals(String expectedXML, String actualXML) throws Exception {
        XMLUnit.setIgnoreWhitespace(true);
        XMLUnit.setIgnoreAttributeOrder(true);

        DetailedDiff diff = new DetailedDiff(XMLUnit.compareXML(expectedXML, actualXML));

        List<?> allDifferences = diff.getAllDifferences();
        Assert.assertEquals("Differences found: "+ diff.toString(), 0, allDifferences.size());
    }

}

If using Maven, add this to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>xmlunit</groupId>
    <artifactId>xmlunit</artifactId>
    <version>1.4</version>
</dependency>

Answer 2

Since you say "semantically equivalent" I assume you mean that you want to do more than just literally verify that the xml outputs are (string) equals, and that you'd want something like

<foo> some stuff here</foo></code>

and

<foo>some stuff here</foo></code>

do read as equivalent. Ultimately it's going to matter how you're defining "semantically equivalent" on whatever object you're reconstituting the message from. Simply build that object from the messages and use a custom equals() to define what you're looking for.