A simple, flexible JSON deep-equality comparator with optional settings to ignore and prune specific JSON fields.

JsonEquals is a simple JSON deep-equality comparator for Java. It parses two JSON inputs and does a thorough comparison between each key, value, and array index, ignoring the ordering of JSON keys during comparison. In addition, one can selectively define what equality consists of by providing certain fields to ignore and certain array indices to prune (see examples below).

Example use cases: JsonEquals is perfect for comparing JSON responses between production and staging environments when your project is due for an API upgrade.

The current version of JsonEquals is used in production under the same scenario listed above, to compare JSON responses between different environments, which helps accelerate the upgrade process for updating API dependencies to newer versions by indicating differences in response data.

Javadocs here

JsonEquals uses LazyJSON, a simple and lightweight Java library to parse (read) JSON.

To compare two JSON strings, simply create JsonRoot objects: JsonRoot.from(jsonString) and use JsonRoot#compareTo(another JsonRoot)

The JsonRoot#compareTo method returns a JsonCompareResult, which holds information regarding the comparison (isEqual boolean, success messages list, failure (inequality) messages list)

JsonEquals is capable of ignoring fields and pruning JSON objects within JSON arrays before comparison. For example, responses with different timestamps can be ignored (ignore list), and array objects containing JSON objects with certain field values can be ignored (pruned list with expected value to be filtered out).

Supply a List<String> of strings in a dot-notated JSON path format to have JsonEquals ignore these nodes during comparison. Use JsonRoot#compareToWithIgnore()

List<String> ignoreList = new ArrayList<>();

ignoreList.add(... see below comment block);
/*
ignoreList.add("$");    // Ignores root element and all sub-children
ignoreList.add("$[1]"); // If root element is an array, ignore the second object in the array including all its sub-children
ignoreList.add("$[*]"); // Use * as a wildcard to specify all elements in an array
ignoreList.add("$.data.timestamp");
// Ignores the root -> data -> timestamp values during comparison, e.g. the two JSONs below will be equal
{
    "data": {
        "name": "John Smith"
        "timestamp": 12345
    }
}

    versus
    
{
    "data": {
        "name": "John Smith"
        "timestamp": 23456
    }
}
*/

JsonCompareResult result = jsonRootA.compareToWithIgnore(jsonRootB, ignoreList);

Supply a Map<String, String> in a dot-notated JSON path format to expected value in string form to act as a predicate. Any matches will be filtered out (read: removed) before the comparison starts, and therefore ignored during comparison. Note that this will shift the array indices. Use JsonRoot#compareToWithPrune()

Format: Map<String, String> -> ("arrayIndexObjectPath:fieldName", "valueToFilterInStringForm")

e.g.

    Map<String, String> pruneMap = new HashMap<>();
    pruneMap.put("$.someObject.someArray[*]:booleanName", "false"); // * is a wildcard to select all array elements
    
    JsonCompareResult result = jsonRootA.compareToWithPrune(jsonRootB, pruneMap);
    // Or combine both pruning and ignore list
    JsonCompareResult ignoreAndPruneResult = jsonRootA.compareTo(jsonRootB, ignoreList, pruneMap);

the JSON string:

{
    "someObject": {
        "someArray": [
            ... // Objects from index 0 to 5 go here
            {   // Object with index 6 in someArray
                "someString": "hello",
                "booleanName": "false"
            },
            {   // Object with index 7 in someArray
                "someString": "world",
                "booleanName": "true"
            }
            ... // Objects from index 8 and beyond go here
        ]
    }
}

In the above example, after pruning the JSON file before comparison, the object $.someObject.someArray[6] will be removed from comparison, which shifts object $.someObject.someArray[7] down to index 6, and so on, until everything that matches has been pruned from the array. This can be useful when checking a list of responses from two different environments where there can be gaps in the arrays, for example, if we have an array of applications installed, we can define equality as having the same installed apps from both responses by pruning the apps that are not installed.

For a thorough example, see IgnoreAndPruneTest.java, along with ignore_prune_a.json and ignore_prune_b.json

Debug mode can be enabled with JsonEquals.setDebugMode(true), which will continuously log each leaf object or array primitive value being checked to the console.

Check out the test files for examples.

JsonEquals uses JitPack for distribution. See https://jitpack.io/#kvnxiao/jsonequals for more information.

Replace @VERSION@ with the version number or commit hash.

    allprojects {
        repositories {
            jcenter()
            maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
        }
    }

    dependencies {
        compile 'com.github.kvnxiao:jsonequals:1.0.1'
    }

    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>jitpack.io</id>
            <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
        </repository>
    </repositories>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.github.kvnxiao</groupId>
        <artifactId>jsonequals</artifactId>
        <version>1.0.1</version>
    </dependency>

Have suggestions? See problems? Got new ideas or improvements? Feel free to submit an issue or pull request!

This project is licensed under Apache 2.0