Unexpected difference found when comparing elements with empty elements in xmlUnit

Question

Comparing these two snippets of XML:

testXml:
<ELEMENT1>
    <CHILD1></CHILD1>
</ELEMENT1>

actualXml:
<ELEMENT1>
    <CHILD1>notEmpty</CHILD1>
</ELEMENT1>

using:

Diff diff = new Diff(testXml, actualXml);
Detailed detailedDiff = new DetailedDiff(diff);

Now detailedDiff.getAllDifferences(); will return a DifferenceConstants.HAS_CHILD_NODES_ID difference and if you print the difference to the console it looks like this:

Expected presence of child nodes to be 'false' but was 'true' - comparing <CHILD1...> at /ELEMENT1[1]/CHILD1[1] to <CHILD1...> at /ELEMENT1[1]/CHILD1[1]

My question is, why is the difference of type DifferenceConstants.HAS_CHILD_NODES_ID and not DifferenceConstants.TEXT_VALUE_ID? The structure of the two XML-snippets are the same, but the text value of the two differs.

So, why doesn't that trigger a difference?

This is the actual xml for a unit test that Im currently writing. So this is the exact code that I have tested. — Olle Söderström
– Olle Söderström, Commented Oct 12, 2012 at 13:41

Mik378 · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-12 14:00:16Z

2

Try to use this ElementQualifier:

Diff diff = new Diff(testXml, actualXml);
diff.overrideElementQualifier(new RecursiveElementNameAndTextQualifier() );
Detailed detailedDiff = new DetailedDiff(diff);

here is the description from javadoc:

public RecursiveElementNameAndTextQualifier()
Uses element names and the text nested an arbitrary level of child elements deeper into the element to compare elements. Checks all nodes, not just first child element. Does not ignore empty text nodes.

The interested thing here is the "does not ignore empty text nodes".

It seems that the default ElementQualifier treats empty nodes as a missing node, and only checks for the first error related to one node. So in your case, possibly solely the "HAS_CHILD_NODES_ID" is thrown instead of including also "TEXT_VALUE_ID".

At least, RecursiveElementNameAndTextQualifier goes deeper.

edited Oct 12, 2012 at 14:00

answered Oct 12, 2012 at 13:54

Mik378

22.2k15 gold badges94 silver badges191 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Olle Söderström Over a year ago

Yes I've tried that one, but it didn't work the way I wanted just as you stated. I think I will try to implemented a DifferenceListener that ignores this case...somehow. However, it feels like there should be a cleaner way to solve this issue?

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Unexpected difference found when comparing elements with empty elements in xmlUnit

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related