Google diff match patch library

Diff match patch library is useful to compare the differences between the two texts.It compares the texts and displays what is added, removed or unchanged.

We use Python in our example below.

Let us see a quick example

Firstly, we will install diff match patch

pip install diff-match-patch

Moving forward we will import diff_match_patch

import diff_match_patch

Let us consider using two strings, we will name it as old_string and new_string

import diff_match_patch

old_string = """I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes,
I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst,
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."""

new_string = """I'm selfish, impatient and a little secure. I don't make mistakes,
I am out of control and at times hard to handle difficult things. But if you can't handle me at my worst,
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."""

Now, we will create an object of diff_match_patch and call diff_main(old_string, new_string)

import diff_match_patch

old_string = """I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes,
I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst,
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."""

new_string = """I'm selfish, impatient and a little secure. I don't make mistakes,
I am out of control and at times hard to handle difficult things. But if you can't handle me at my worst,
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."""

diff_obj = diff_match_patch.diff_match_patch()
diffs = diff_obj.diff_main(old_string, new_string)

What diff_main(text1, text2) does?

It computes an array of differences to describe the transformation of text1 into text2. For Example in the above code diffs contains an array of tuples.

We will see what this tuple contains, before that let us make this array Human readable.

diff_match_patch has a method diff_cleanupSemantic(diffs) which does the job for us.

diff_obj.diff_cleanupSemantic(diffs)

Now variable diffs contains

[(0, "I'm selfish, impatient and a little "), (-1, 'in'), (0, 'secure. I '), (1, "don't "), (0, 'make mistakes,\nI am out of control and at times hard to handle'), (1, ' difficult things'), (0, ". But if you can't handle me at my worst,\nthen you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.")]

Now it looks better, let us see what these tuples contains:

  • The first element specifies if it is an insertion (1), a deletion (-1) or an equality (0).
  • The second element specifies the affected text.

To convert these array of tuples to HTML.We use diff_prettyHtml(diffs).

html = diff_obj.diff_prettyHtml(diffs)

There you are, we can now see the differences in old and new text.

** I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I don't make mistakes,¶
I am out of control and at times hard to handle difficult things. But if you can't handle me at my worst,¶
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best. **

But the above html is not so clear to understand what is added and removed right?

We will write a method to see these changes side by side.

import diff_match_patch

old_string = """I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes,
I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst,
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."""

new_string = """I'm selfish, impatient and a little secure. I don't make mistakes,
I am out of control and at times hard to handle difficult things. But if you can't handle me at my worst,
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."""

class SideBySideDiff(diff_match_patch.diff_match_patch):

    def old_content(self, diffs):
        """
        Returns HTML representation of 'deletions'
        """
        html = []
        for (flag, data) in diffs:
            text = (data.replace("&", "&")
                    .replace("<", "&lt;")
                    .replace(">", "&gt;")
                    .replace("\n", "<br>"))

            if flag == self.DIFF_DELETE:
                html.append("""<del style=\"background:#ffe6e6;
                    \">%s</del>""" % text)
            elif flag == self.DIFF_EQUAL:
                html.append("<span>%s</span>" % text)
        return "".join(html)

    def new_content(self, diffs):
        """
        Returns HTML representation of 'insertions'
        """
        html = []
        for (flag, data) in diffs:
            text = (data.replace("&", "&amp;")
                    .replace("<", "&lt;")
                    .replace(">", "&gt;")
                    .replace("\n", "<br>"))
            if flag == self.DIFF_INSERT:
                html.append("""<ins style=\"background:#e6ffe6;
                    \">%s</ins>""" % text)
            elif flag == self.DIFF_EQUAL:
                html.append("<span>%s</span>" % text)
        return "".join(html)


diff_obj = SideBySideDiff()
result = diff_obj.diff_main(old_string, new_string)
diff_obj.diff_cleanupSemantic(result)

old_record = diff_obj.old_content(result)
new_record = diff_obj.new_content(result)

Here is the output for the above code:

Old record

I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes,
I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst,
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.

New record

I'm selfish, impatient and a little secure. I don't make mistakes,
I am out of control and at times hard to handle difficult things. But if you can't handle me at my worst,
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.

For reference and some more methods see API

Feedbacks and suggestions are welcome :)

e :)

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Thank you for reading the Agiliq blog. This article was written by Manjunath Hugar on May 9, 2014 in google .

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