xmldiff is a library and a command-line utility for making diffs out of XML. This may seem like something that doesn't need a dedicated utility, but change detection in hierarchical data is very different from change detection in flat data. XML type formats are also not only used for computer readable data, it is also often used as a format for hierarchical data that can be rendered into human readable formats. A traditional diff on such a format would tell you line by line the differences, but this would not be be readable by a human. xmldiff provides tools to make human readable diffs in those situations.

Full documentation is on xmldiff.readthedocs.io

xmldiff is still under rapid development, and no guarantees are done that the output of one version will be the same as the output of any previous version.

xmldiff is both a command-line tool and a Python library. To use it from the command-line, just run xmldiff with two input files:

$ xmldiff file1.xml file2.xml

There is also a command to patch a file with the output from the xmldiff command:

$ xmlpatch file.diff file1.xml

There is a simple API for using xmldiff as a library:

from lxml import etree
from xmldiff import main, formatting

diff = main.diff_files('file1.xml', 'file2.xml',
                       formatter=formatting.XMLFormatter())

There is also a method diff_trees() that take two lxml trees, and a method diff_texts() that will take strings containing XML. Similarly, there is patch_file() patch_text() and patch_tree():

result = main.patch_file('file.diff', 'file1.xml')

• A complete, ground up, pure-Python rewrite

• Easier to maintain, the code is less complex and more Pythonic, and uses more custom classes instead of just nesting lists and dicts.

• Fixes the problems with certain large files and solves the memory leaks.

• A nice, easy to use Python API for using it as a library.

• Adds support for showing the diffs in different formats, mainly one where differences are marked up in the XML, useful for making human readable diffs.

  These formats can show text differences in a semantically meaningful way.

• An output format compatible with 0.6/1.x is also available.

• 2.0 is currently significantly slower than xmldiff 0.6/1.x, but this will change in the future. Currently we make no effort to make xmldiff 2.0 fast, we concentrate on making it correct and usable.

• Lennart Regebro, [email protected] (main author)
• Stephan Richter, [email protected]
• Albertas Agejevas, [email protected]

The diff algorithm is based on "Change Detection in Hierarchically Structured Information", and the text diff is using Google's diff_match_patch algorithm.