Comparing two JSON objects irrespective of the sequence of elements in them

Question

Is there any way / class / module in python to compare two json objects and print the changes/differences?

I have tried with "json_tools" which is gives fairly good results, however diff failed in case if there are python lists' with elements in different orders in two json objects.

e.g.

JSON 1:

{
    'Person' : 
        {
            'FName'    : 'John',
            'LName'    : 'Rambo',
            'Sex'      : 'Male'
            'Height'   : '6 ft',
            'Weight'   : '90 KG',
            'Children' :
                [
                    {
                        'FName'  : 'Anna',
                        'LName'  : 'Rambo',
                        'Sex'    : 'Female',
                        'Height' : '5 ft',
                        'Weight' : '55 KG',
                    },
                    {
                        'FName'  : 'Jemmy',
                        'LName'  : 'Rambo',
                        'Sex'    : 'Male',
                        'Height' : '5 ft',
                        'Weight' : '60 KG',
                    }

                ]
        }
}

JSON 2:

{
    'Person' : 
        {
            'FName'    : 'John',
            'LName'    : 'Rambo',
            'Sex'      : 'Male'
            'Height'   : '6 ft',
            'Weight'   : '90 KG',
            'Children' :
                [
                    {
                        'FName'  : 'Jemmy',
                        'LName'  : 'Rambo',
                        'Sex'    : 'Male',
                        'Height' : '5 ft',
                        'Weight' : '60 KG',
                    },
                    {
                        'FName'  : 'Anna',
                        'LName'  : 'Rambo',
                        'Sex'    : 'Female',
                        'Height' : '5 ft',
                        'Weight' : '55 KG',
                    }
                ]
        }
}

json diff shows the Two jsons are mismatched.. Logically those are identical..

Is there a good way of json matching and comparing in python?

score 25 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 23 '16 at 14:27

25

You can use jsondiff

from jsondiff import diff
diff(json1, json2)

... assuming you have json1 and json2 loaded with the json entries from your example (and by the way, you have a missing comma after the 'sex' entry).

answered Sep 23 '16 at 14:27

user2111922

891
9
9

1

Great answer! Helped me compare two auto-generated json files and work the differences until the `diff` output was empty, just like I wanted. – Capt. Crunch Jun 17 '19 at 05:18
I found https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25851183/how-to-compare-two-json-objects-with-the-same-elements-in-a-different-order-equa/25851972 this link more helpful – Akhilraj N S Oct 21 '20 at 07:05
does this work on nested array of json objects as well? – sattva_venu Jan 28 '21 at 12:11

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 04 '18 at 15:07

16

you can use deepdiff with ignore_order=True

from deepdiff import DeepDiff
t1 = {1:1, 2:2, 3:3, 4:{"a":"hello", "b":[1, 2, 3]}}
t2 = {1:1, 2:2, 3:3, 4:{"a":"hello", "b":[1, 3, 2, 3]}}
ddiff = DeepDiff(t1, t2, ignore_order=True)
print (ddiff)
{}

answered Sep 04 '18 at 15:07

Nir Soudry

379
3
6

1

There's a difference in between _[1, 2, 3]_ from **t1** and _[1, 3, 2, 3]_ from **t2**. How come the output is empty?? – Afsan Abdulali Gujarati Feb 12 '19 at 21:39
4

@AfsanAbdulaliGujarati you can add `report_repetition=True` if you want to be alerted for repetitions. see their docs – Nir Soudry Feb 14 '19 at 12:30
deepdiff looks neat, thanks – odigity May 28 '23 at 21:15

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 12 '13 at 05:34

9

Logically those are identical.

They're not. Order matters in a JSON array. I don't know of any tools that will ignore order for you. You could try recursing over the deserialized structure, turning lists into some sort of multiset and dicts into some sort of hashable, frozen dict (so you can put them into multisets), then running your own diff routine on that.

answered Jul 12 '13 at 05:34

user2357112

260,549
28
431
505

how we can use this by ignoring some keys? – Bimlesh Sharma Dec 01 '17 at 17:15

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 08 '23 at 06:28

3

You could try doing a diff on the results of json.dumps(jobj, sort_keys=True)

edited Jan 08 '23 at 06:28

petezurich

9,280
9
43
57

answered Jul 12 '13 at 05:09

Steve Barnes

27,618
6
63
73

1

`sort_keys` won't reorder JSON arrays; it only affects the order in which JSON object key-value pairs are serialized. – user2357112 Dec 01 '17 at 17:22

Comparing two JSON objects irrespective of the sequence of elements in them

JSON 1:

JSON 2:

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