VideosGenerating File Comparison Reports Using Command-Line Scripts

Overview
Transcript

Overview

Duration: 06:49

This video offers a demonstration of using scripts from a command-line tool to compare files and generating comparison reports in various formats.

Transcript

00:00:07The purpose of this video is to demonstrate how to generate various reports that show

00:00:11the results of a file comparison using scripts in a command line window.

00:00:16I start with my command line navigated to the scripts folder within the Oxygen installation

00:00:21directory ... and I'll paste a command I have prepared to simply compare two files.

00:00:29You can see that the comparison report was generated in the console

00:00:33and by default, it's in YAML format. The report shows information such as the

00:00:38total number of differences found, the number of differents for each category,

00:00:43and a list of document offsets that identify the fragments with differences.

00:00:49As you can see, the report is not very easy to interpret in this format, but you can generate

00:00:54the report in other formats such as JSON, XML, or you can generate the report in HTML format with

00:01:00the modified text displayed side-by-side. Note that I can use the -help option to show the

00:01:06script's specifications, including information about the supported options and arguments.

00:01:12For example, if I want to change the output format for my comparison report,

00:01:17I can use the -out option to specify the output format and the -outfile option to

00:01:22specify the path for an output file where the comparison results will be saved.

00:01:29So, I'll show some examples using the -out option,

00:01:32and for this first one, I'll specify JSON as the format. And, you can see that it generated the

00:01:38comparison results in the command line window and in a JSON file format.

00:01:46Next, an example using HTML for the format.

00:01:50And, you can see that the resulting report is formatted in HTML structure.

00:01:57Back in the help documentation, there's a recommendation that if you choose the

00:02:01HTML output format (as I did), it is recommended that you choose to save the console to a

00:02:07specified HTML file to view the comparison result in your preferred browser...

00:02:13and this is where the -outfile option is helpful. So, I'll add it to the end

00:02:18of my previous command, specifying a path and name for an output file.

00:02:24Now, I can locate that specified file and open it in my browser.

00:02:29It results in a user-friendly HTML report with the differences presented and highlighted based

00:02:35on the types of differences. I'll quickly go over parts of the report

00:02:39so you understand what you're seeing. There is a legend at the top that shows the

00:02:43number of differences and includes some filtering checkboxes.

00:02:48I can hover over a checkbox to see a tooltip with more information about the filter, and

00:02:52if I select a particular filter, the results are filtered accordingly.

00:02:57The columns in the middle separate the two files and also include symbols that

00:03:01represent the type of difference. Now, I'll talk about some of the

00:03:05specific differences. Notice that the 2nd block of difference seems to just

00:03:10be a comment added by John and doesn't affect the actual document content.

00:03:16Within the 3rd block of differences, there seems to be some empty lines that were added by Mary,

00:03:22but again, they didn't affect the actual content.

00:03:25and the 4th block of differences seems to just be reporting a difference

00:03:28in the order of an attribute. I also want to point out that I can

00:03:34refine the report by using filtering options in the script itself.

00:03:39For example, back in the help documentation, you can see that

00:03:43there are various supported options for ignoring certain types of differences.

00:03:48I'll paste a command that includes some ignore options ... specifically,

00:03:53to ignore differences in whitespaces, comments, and the order of attributes.

00:03:59Again, I can open the resulting output file in my browser and now there are 3 less entries in

00:04:05the results table, since I chose to ignore those specific types of differences.

00:04:11It's also possible to generate a comparison report for a 3-way comparison.

00:04:15In this case, I need to specify the paths of the 2 files to be compared,

00:04:20immediately followed by the path to the base reference file.

00:04:25I'll open the resulting report ... notice that it's a bit different.

00:04:30For example, the filters are a little different since the context is different

00:04:35than with the 2-way comparison. For a 3-way comparison, the report is structured according

00:04:38to the context of what you would expect for a versioning system.

00:04:43Back in the help documentation, notice that when using the HTML format for the -out option,

00:04:49it supports an inlineCSS qualifier that results in the HTML report being formatted with inline

00:04:56CSS styling that is, for instance, more suitable for inserting it into the body of emails.

00:05:04So, I'll paste an example of a command with the inline CSS qualifier...

00:05:10And when I view the resulting HTML report in the browser,

00:05:14the CSS styling is now "in-line", the filters are hidden and the

00:05:18middle columns that normally include the diff symbols are now hidden.

00:05:24Just for context, you could see the results of the "behind the scenes"

00:05:29implementation by viewing the source of the reports. I can right-click anywhere in the

00:05:31reports and then select "View page source" and you can see how each report is constructed.

00:05:38For 3-way comparisons, you also have the ability to merge the modifications that are detected,

00:05:43as long as there are no conflicting changes. This is achieved by using the -merge or -mergeout

00:05:49options. The -merge option results in the incoming differences being merged into the 1st file

00:05:55(again, unless there are conflicts, in which case, the merge is aborted).

00:06:01However, if you don't want to directly affect the content of the first file, you can use the

00:06:06-mergeout option to instead create a new file that includes the results of the merge operation

00:06:11and it is saved in a specified directory. Now, I'll paste a command that oompares the file

00:06:17that just resulted from the mergeout option with the 2nd file involved in the comparison.

00:06:23I'll open the resulting file in my browser. And if I compare it to the first results file, you can

00:06:27see that there are no more incoming changes.As you can see, there are a lot of different

00:06:36options that you have available to refine the HTML reports to suit your specific needs.

00:06:42This concludes the demonstration. Thank you for watching.

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VideosGenerating File Comparison Reports Using Command-Line Scripts

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