StructDiff

Visually compare deeply nested data structures.

This gem started life as a hack to help me debug monstrous data blobs coming and going from an API. Trying to eyeball two structures each half a screen in size, with mostly equivalent data arranged in different orders, was a great big barrel of no fun!

NOTE: This gem is just barely pupating from "kludgy hack" to "a ruby gem that thinly wraps a kludgy hack". My development objectives for this tool are to increase functionality and to make it easier to use. If the move to a gem proves useful then I'll consider treating the code as something I care about maintaining. Right now it's, well, it's a kludgy hack. Draw your own assumptions (the more dismal the better).

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'struct_diff'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install struct_diff

Usage

require 'struct_diff'

hash1 = { "a" => { "b" => 64, "c" => 13 }}
hash2 = { "a" => { "b" => 63, "c" => 13 }}

StructDiff.hash_cmp h1, h2
# => output rendered to console

TODO: Note that only comparing hashes is currently supported. Eventually hash_cmp will become struct_diff or struct_cmp and will tolerate Arrays, and maybe Sets and Structs (but probably YAGNI). Further TODO items can be found in the TODO file or issues.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/dbrady/struct_diff. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the StructDiff project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.