ComparisonFormatter

	XMLUnit 2.x has not been released, yet. This documentation may change until the final release of XMLUnit.

The ComparisonFormatter will format the differences between control and test xml for human readable as one String. Normally the default formatter will be used: org.xmlunit.diff.DefaultComparisonFormatter

But you can also implement your own formatter. There are two methods to implement:

String getDescription(Comparison difference); // [1]
String getDetails(Detail details, ComparisonType type, boolean formatXml); // [2]

1. getDescription(Comparison):
   should return a short human readable description what the differences are.
   Example: Return the String "Expected number of attributes '1' but was '2' - comparing <a...> at /a[1] to <a...> at /a[1]"
2. getDetails(Detail, ComparisonType, boolean):
   should return the comparison details from the effected Test- or Control-Node. See getDetails(Detail, ComparisonType, boolean)

getDetails(Detail, ComparisonType, boolean)

The default implementation DefaultComparisonFormatter returns the XML snippet which contains the differences.

This XML snippets are used by the org.xmlunit.matchers.CompareMatcher to create a org.junit.ComparisonFailure which can show the differences in your IDE as a nice Diff-View.

• The Detail Argument contains either the details of the Control-Node or the Test-Node.
• Depending on the ComparisonType of the differences the target-node, his parent or the whole document should be returned as XML-Snippet.
• The boolean formatXml tells if the resulting xml should be formatted or not.
  For Example: if the input source was wrapped with a WhitespaceStrippedSource the resulting XML can and should be formatted to be human readable. But if the source was not wrapped by a content modification source, the formatting could remove/hide the real differences between test and control node.