Best tool to compare xml files

I appreciate the offer rally25rs, but I am looking for something more off the shelf. Show 2 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Well worth a try. Improve this answer. Community Bot 1 1 1 silver badge.

Sylverdrag Sylverdrag 8, 5 5 gold badges 33 33 silver badges 50 50 bronze badges. Can you tell me how to get to the compare feature? You open a xml file, then you go to the "view" menu and click on "compare XML files" — Sylverdrag.

Thanks for suggesting that. Just tried XML Notepad, and it seemed to have some bugs. The number 0. I would agree, XML Notepad is no longer updated, and is riddled with bugs, particularly when expanding or closing the hierarchy. If I had to use it, I could, but there's more robust and better designed tools out there. Add a comment. Jeff Atwood John Virgolino John Virgolino 1, 3 3 gold badges 16 16 silver badges 25 25 bronze badges.

Thanks John, this is the best answer so far. What was on the picture before it was removed? A screenshot? JirkaHanika Yes. Not sure why it went away like that. Mike L Mike L 4, 4 4 gold badges 34 34 silver badges 51 51 bronze badges. Be sure to set the preferences to show differences only.

LaComb Jr. James Sulak James Sulak As far as your comment about the nontechnical ability of your users: Thanks for the Responses Matt Jordan Matt Jordan 2, 1 1 gold badge 26 26 silver badges 29 29 bronze badges.

Aussie Craig Aussie Craig 4 4 silver badges 5 5 bronze badges. Christophe Herreman Christophe Herreman Is it XML sensitive? I do not think so, I believe it just treats them as plain text files and so spot diffs that do not exist in the XML infoset such as a change of encoding.

Dan Blanchard Dan Blanchard 3, 1 1 gold badge 30 30 silver badges 25 25 bronze badges. Thanks for the link. I ran the utility on some files that the user would of, and the compare output was a nice format. Unfortunately it inaccurately marked some of the xml as different when it was not. Ray Lu Ray Lu I have tested this and it simple outputs incorrect results. Kris Erickson Kris Erickson Highlighting Colors The differences are also highlighted in several colors, depending on the type of change, and dynamic lines connect the compared fragments in the middle section between the two panes.

Gray - Identifies an addition of a node in the left side your outgoing changes. Blue - Identifies an addition of a node in the right side incoming changes. Lighter Shade - Identifies blocks of changes that can be merged in their entirety.

Darker Shade - Identifies specific changes within the blocks that can be merged more precisely. Other notes for pasting fragments: As long as the fragment is more than 10 characters, the application will attempt to automatically detect the content type. If one of those content types is detected, the fragments will be displayed with syntax highlights. If you save modified fragments, a dialog box opens that allows you to save the changes as a new document.

Navigate Differences To navigate through differences, do one of the following: Use the navigation buttons on the toolbar or in the Compare menu. Select a block of differences by clicking its small colored marker in the overview ruler located in the right-most part of the window.

At the top of the overview ruler there is a success indicator that turns green where there are no differences, or red if differences are found. Click a colored area in between the two text editors. Editing Actions You can edit the files directly in either editing pane. A variety of actions are available on the toolbar and in the various menus these same actions are also available in the contextual menu in both editing panes.

The tool also includes some inline actions to help you merge, copy, or remove changes. When you select a change, the following inline action widgets are available, depending on the type of change: Append left change to right and Append right change to left Copies the content of the selected change from one side and appends it on the other, according to the content of the corresponding change. As a result, the side where the arrow points to will contain the changes from both sides.

Copy change from left to right and Copy change from right to left Replaces the content of a change from one side with the content of the corresponding change from the other side. Remove change Rejects the change on the particular side and preserves the particular content on the other side. Two-Way Diff Algorithms Oxygen XML Editor offers the following two-way diff algorithms to compare files or fragments: Auto - Selects the most appropriate algorithm, based on the compared content and its size selected by default.

Characters - Computes the differences at character level, meaning that it compares two files or fragments looking for identical characters. This algorithm is not available when the file comparison is in Author comparison mode.

Words - Computes the differences at word level, meaning that it compares two files or fragments looking for identical words. Lines - Computes the differences at line level, meaning that it compares two files or fragments looking for identical lines of text.

Oxygen XML Editor also includes a three-way comparison feature to help you solve conflicts and merge changes between multiple modifications. It is especially helpful for teams who have multiple authors editing and committing the same documents. It provides a comparison between a local change, another change, and the original base revision.

Some additional advantages include: Visualize and merge content that was modified by you and another member of your team. Marks differences correctly even when the document structure is rearranged. Allows you to merge XML-relevant modifications. Figure 3.

Three-Way Comparison. Compare Files To perform a three-way comparison, follow these steps: Open a file in the left panel and the file you want to compare it to in the right panel. Click the Three-Way Comparison button on the toolbar and select the base original file in the Base field. To highlight the differences, click the Perform File Differencing button on the toolbar. The resulting comparison will show you differences between the two files, as well as differences between either of them and the base original file.

Figure 4. Three-Way Differences. Gray - Identifies your outgoing changes that do not include conflicts.

Blue - Identifies incoming changes that do not include conflicts. Three-Way Diff Algorithms Oxygen XML Editor offers the following three-way diff algorithms to compare files: Auto - Selects the most appropriate algorithm, based on the compared content and its size selected by default. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Diff tool for XML files? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 10 months ago. Active 1 year, 1 month ago. Viewed 9k times. Free would be nice. Optionaly ignoring name spaces would be nice. Improve this question. Jan, have you tried the most common diff programs on Windows, such as WinMerge, to see if they have an option for that functionality?

Note that WinMerge has many updates since the last update of regular WinMerge, even if the name implies the opposite. These XML files are the "same" only true if you insist that the order of some tags is irrelevant. For some folks, the order does matter. You need a schema or some other signal to indicate which case, for which tags.

Mast My current work no longer needs this, so I have this on the back burner. Still plan to revisit this post though, when I can make some time. Show 6 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Technically, XMLs are different if they have whitespaces or not if the order is different if they have comments or not if they have processing instructions or not if their encoding is different if their namespaces are different but of course you can decide to ignore that or not, based on the semantic information an XML does not have.

Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. Thomas Weller Thomas Weller 9, 2 2 gold badges 31 31 silver badges 70 70 bronze badges. I have upvoted this answer but not marked it as the correct one. Reason: the interface of the results window of the GUI tool is horrible: when comparing two large XML files, the diff window is approx pixels wide, contains all identical XML, and has no scrollbars.