Support Diff Tools For Comparing Failed Tests

[Chris_Moesel]

When a test fails based on a failed XPath Match, a little dialog pops up with a message from the XmlUnit.Diff tool.  It is hard to use this message to find the real difference between the actual and expected response.

It would be great if I could configure soapUI to use an external diff tool (like WinMerge) to compare the actual vs. expected response.  Even better would be an integrated graphical diff tool, but allowing an external tool seems like a good first step.

Thanks again for a great product!

[omatzura]

Hi Chris,

thanks, maybe integrating something like WinMerge is a good first step... I'll have a look around..

regards,

/Ole
eviware.com

[Chris_Moesel]

I think that many of the diff tools support command-line options to start them.  WinMerge has it's command line instructions here:
http://winmerge.org/2.6/manual/CommandLine.html

One of the preference settings for SOAPui could be the path to your WinMerge executable.  When user wants to diff the failed test, you would save the expected and actual responses as separate files in a temp directory and then launch WinMerge using the command line call.

Of course, WinMerge only works on Win32 systems, so you might want to support a few others as well...

OR you could make it completely generic.  The preferences could accept the path to any diff tool, along with the needed arguments, and you could use placeholders for the expected and actual responses.

For example, WinMerge configuration might look like this:

Executable: C:\Program Files\WinMerge\WinMerge.exe
Args: /ub /dl "Expected Response" /dr "Actual Response" ${Expected} ${Actual}

That requires a bit more of a power user, but it's super flexible.  Anyway, if I write much more then I'll start wondering if I should have just coded it myself and made a contribution...  So I'll stop here. 

[omatzura]

Thanks Chris !

I think we have enough design-input to move to the first iteration 😉

regards,

/Ole
eviware.com