HTML-formatted diff'ing of HTML snippets
Project description
HTML-Diff: HTML-formatted diff'ing of HTML snippets
Compares two HTML snippets strings and returns the diff as a valid HTML snippet with changes wrapped in <del>
and <ins>
tags.
Relies on BeautifulSoup4
with html.parser
backend for HTML parsing and dumping.
HTML-Diff focusses on providing valid diffs, that is:
- The returned strings represent valid HTML snippets;
- Provided that the input snippets represent valid HTML snippets containing no
<del>
or<ins>
tags, they can be identically reconstructed from the diff output, by removing<ins>
tags and their content and replacing<del>
tags by their content for the old snippet, the other way round for the new one. Functions are provided in thecheck
module for those reconstructions and checking that the reconstructions match the inputs.
Usage
Basic usage
>>> from html_diff import diff
>>> diff("<em>ABC</em>", "<em>AB</em>C")
'<em>AB<del>C</del></em><ins>C</ins>'
Adding custom tags to be treated as insecable blocks
Example use case: having MathJax elements wrapped into <span class="math-tex">\(...\)</span>
and wanting to avoid <del>
and <ins>
tags inside the \(...\)
(which would be badly rendered):
>>> from html_diff.config import config
>>> config.tags_fcts_as_blocks.append(lambda tag: tag.name == "span" and "math-tex" in tag.attrs.get("class", []))
Without it (does not render correctly with MathJax):
>>> diff(r'<span class="math-tex">\(\vec{v}\)</span>', r'<span class="math-tex">\(\vec{w}\)</span>')
'<span class="math-tex">\\(\\vec{<del>v</del><ins>w</ins>}\\)</span>'
With it:
>>> diff(r'<span class="math-tex">\(\vec{v}\)</span>', r'<span class="math-tex">\(\vec{w}\)</span>')
'<del><span class="math-tex">\\(\\vec{v}\\)</span></del><ins><span class="math-tex">\\(\\vec{w}\\)</span></ins>'
The functions in config.config.tags_fcts_as_blocks
should take a bs4.element.Tag
as input and return a bool
; the tags are tested against all functions in the list, and are considered insecable blocks if any call returns True
.
Word cutting in diff
By default, the diff'ing algorithm for plain text parts does not care about words - if a word part is modified, that part gets <del>
'ed and <ins>
'ed, while the rest of the word remains untouched. It may however be more readable to have full words deleted and reinserted. To ensure this, switch config.config.cuttable_words_mode
to either config.Config.CuttableWordsMode.UNCUTTABLE_SIMPLE
or config.Config.CuttableWordsMode.UNCUTTABLE_PRECISE
:
config.config.cuttable_words_mode == config.Config.CuttableWordsMode.CUTTABLE
(default):
>>> diff("OlyExams", "ExamTools")
'<del>Oly</del>Exam<ins>Tool</ins>s'
>>> diff("abcdef<br/>ghifjk", "abcdef ghifjk")
'abcdef<ins> ghifjk</ins><del><br/>ghifjk</del>'
config.config.cuttable_words_mode == config.Config.CuttableWordsMode.UNCUTTABLE_SIMPLE
(fast and gives acceptable results):
>>> diff("OlyExams", "ExamTools")
'<del>OlyExams</del><ins>ExamTools</ins>'
>>> diff("abcdef<br/>ghifjk", "abcdef ghifjk")
'abcdef<ins> ghifjk</ins><del><br/>ghifjk</del>'
config.config.cuttable_words_mode == config.Config.CuttableWordsMode.UNCUTTABLE_PRECISE
(quite slow, but uses early word breaking for better matching, in particular if plain string parts of the inputs were split or merged between old and *new):
>>> diff("OlyExams", "ExamTools")
'<del>OlyExams</del><ins>ExamTools</ins>'
>>> diff("abcdef<br/>ghifjk", "abcdef ghifjk")
'abcdef<del><br/></del><ins> </ins>ghifjk'
In uncuttable words modes, non-word characters correspond to re
's \W
pattern.
Reconstructing old and new from diff
>>> old = "old_string"
>>> new = "new_string"
>>> d = diff(old, new)
>>> from html_diff.check import new_from_diff
>>> new == new_from_diff(d)
True
>>> from html_diff.check import old_from_diff
>>> old == old_from_diff(d)
True
>>> from html_diff.check import is_diff_valid
>>> is_diff_valid(old, new, d)
True
Testing
Automated testing
Run
python -m unittest
at the root of the project.
Manual testing
Run
python -m html_diff
and navigate to 127.0.0.1:8080 with your browser.
You can specify further options:
-a
or--address
: custom address of the server (default: 127.0.0.1)-p
or--port
: custom port of the server (default: 8080)-b
or--blocks
: definitions of functions to be added toconfig.config.tags_fcts_as_blocks
, e.g.:
python -m html_diff -b 'lambda tag: tag.name == "span" and "math-tex" in tag.attrs.get("class", [])'
-c
or--cuttable-words-mode
: way of treating words cutting, see above for details; one of theconfig.Config.CuttableWordsMode
values (default: CUTTABLE)
Algorithm
Matching
- Parse the inputs with
BeautifulSoup4
; this yields two iterables of elements, eitherbs4.element.NavigableString
orbs4.element.Tag
. - Compare each element of the first iterable with each element of the second one. A match is only allowed in two cases:
- Both elements are
bs4.element.NavigableString
's (depending on the cuttable words mode configuration, matching is done on the raw string, a list of words or on the raw string split in substrings); - Both elements are
bs4.element.Tag
's and theirname
andattrs
attributes exactly match.
- Both elements are
- Each match is temporarily stored, together with a "score":
- For
bs4.element.NavigableString
matches, their matching length as perdifflib.SequenceMatcher
; - For
bs4.element.Tag
matches that are treated as blocks (those that testTrue
with a function ofconfig.config.tags_fcts_as_blocks
), tags that differ have a matching length of0
. Tags comparing equal are assigned following matching length: the length of the tag itself for empty tags (e.g.<br />
) (this is a mostly arbitrary choice), else the length of the content of the tag (tag.string
); - For other, "conventional"
bs4.element.Tag
matches, the matching length is the sum of matching lengths of their children using the same algorithm recursively.
- For
- The highest scoring match is kept and the algorithm recursively repeated on the subiterables before and after the matching elements. Each match thus gets (maximally) a
match_before
and amatch_after
assigned. - Regions without match are stored as "no-matches". With them, both iterables are completely covered by matches and no-matches.
Dumping
- With those tree match structures, dumping can be done directly, recursively, by dumping the
match_before
first, then the matched element itself, finally thematch_after
. Matchedbs4.element.NavigableString
's are dumped parts by parts following the blocks (of words or of characters, depending on the cuttable words mode configuration) found bydifflib.SequenceMatcher
. Matchedbs4.element.Tag
's to be treated as blocks are either dumped without change if fully matching, else are first completely deleted and then completely reinserted. No-matches elements are dumped as completely deleted and completely inserted. - Dumping is done in a
BeautifulSoup4
soup, then output as a string.
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