ds

README

Data Serialization Toolbox (ds)

Semantic Diffs of Data Serialization languages.

Current Capabilities

Parsing and diffs between/of:

• yaml
• json
• toml
• xml. Diffs with XML are inherently a little lossy, see the XML Diffs section.

Diffs can be printed in:

• go-syntax format
• A buggy syntax agnostic format. It can result in unexpected type coercion.

Future Goals

Printing diffs in:

• A stable syntax agnostic format
• The relevant language

Other goals:

• Collapsing unchanged stanzas to make the output easier to understand

Non-Goals

• ini support

XML Diffs

XML diffs are a little lossy. The order of elements in an XML document is significant, but go maps are used to store the elements. ds diff will treat xml like the following two as identical, despite them being technically different:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<note>
    <test2>value2</test2>
    <test>value</test>
</note>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<note>
    <test>value</test>
    <test2>value2</test2>
</note>

If you need order-sensitive diffs of xml files, look into xmldiff.

Inspiration

This is partially a reimplementation, partially a generalization of:

• The phenomenal json-diff by Andrey Tarantsov.
  • This one inspired a lot of the interface and features.
• The equally awesome yamldiff by Sahil Muthoo.
  • This one showed me out some awesome libraries that helped write dsdiff.