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OpenXMLDiff vNxt - Just an easy way of doing things

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Hello Guys – As I told you in my previous blog post, that I am working with Eric on the updated version of OpenXMLDiff. The good news is, I have it ready! It’s uploaded on https://code.msdn.com/openxmldiff. Go, Play with it … 

So, I am sure you’ll have many questions – what’s different? what’s changed? is it a console app? how can you use it? et cetera .. answering em’ all below:

The initial idea behind OpenXMLDiff was to find a easy way of comparing two office files. Once you start writing you OpenXML code, sometimes you’ll find it very necessary to know what’s changed when you changed “X”.

Eric, me and a lot of people struggled with this issue multiple times, e.g. when I wanted to compare two files, to know why only one of a few seemingly similar files work, and others throw an error.

Granted – we have other ways, but nothing (that I found ) was easy enough to say - “Hey! comparing OpenXML files is easy …”

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OpenXMLDiff.dll

This is the core file which does the actual job. I’ve build it as a class library so that you can use it directly from your code if you wish to .. you are free to write you own PowerShell scripts, Winforms apps, Wrapper dlls around it. It’s a simple object model, just one method (Generate) with a couple of overloads to give you more flexibility. This method get’s the job done. But, before you call this method, you’ll need to pass on some options and algorithm to use (basically the options decide, what should be ignored while doing a diff between files).

While generating the report, you’ll also need to tell what sort of output you want? Text or HTML. I’d recommend using the HTML output, because it can highlight the changes in the files which makes things a lot easier.

Once the output is generated, It will fire an event to notify you about the outcome, (or you can just ignore the event if you are planning to to a synchronous call, but presence of event means that you can also use it asynchronously). You catch the event or you don’t -  you will be able to get all the generated output either by using the event parameters, or the read only properties css, js, diffs, sourceparts, targetparts and output

We’ll talk about the CSS and JS afterwards, but sourceparts,targetparts and diffs are dictionaries, which will contain the parts which had differences and the diffgram explaining the differences. The output is the actual report detailing the differences (In the format you’ve selected).

OpenXMLComparer.exe 

Class library given above is a facility; not a compulsion – I’ve also build this Winforms application which uses above dll to generate a report.

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I’ll go into further details in the next post, but first I’d want you to play with this thing and give me the feedbacks – It’s a beta, need to do a few changes yet, still, I’m sure you’ll like it!

 

del.icio.us tags: Pranav+Wagh, Interoperability, Interop, OpenXML, OpenXMLDiff, Office+2007, Office2007, Microsoft+Blogger

IceRocket tags: Pranav+Wagh, Interoperability, Interop, OpenXML, OpenXMLDiff, Office+2007, Office2007, Microsoft+Blogger

 

Not responsible for errors in content, meaning, tact, or judgment. Live and let live. Toes go in first. I didn't do it. Enjoy.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 10, 2008
    PingBack from http://blog.a-foton.ru/2008/07/openxmldiff-vnxt-just-an-easy-way-of-doing-things/

  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2008
    Here is something that is very, very cool! Pranav Wagh has built a much improved version of OpenXmlDiff

  • Anonymous
    July 17, 2008
    I don't do so much with Open XML these days but I still get a few questions from people and I'm still

  • Anonymous
    July 17, 2008
    Les voici : PowerTools : Utiliser System.IO.Packaging dans PowerTools pour modifier des propriétés (Doug

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 29, 2008
    Pranav released another drop of Open XML Diff . There are a couple of bugs fixed. Read about Open XML

  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2008
    Yesterday I received an email from another employee here at Microsoft to check out this tool called Open

  • Anonymous
    August 09, 2008
    Interoperability Study. Jay Kesan and Rajiv Shah of the University of Illinois have published a study

  • Anonymous
    August 17, 2008
    Ce post n’a pas voulu partir ni jeudi ni vendredi, le voici donc ! Des mise à jours à n’en plus finir