XML Matcher Overview

Overview

XML Matcher is a small Java library for matching XML documents with templates. It was designed for automated testing of XML APIs (e.g. Web Services).

Take a look at the following three examples:

<location> <x xm:tolerance='0.01'>-72.98</x> <y xm:tolerance='0.01'>42.52</y> </location>	Template defines tolerance for matching floating point values with actual document. Namespace prefix 'xm' annotates internal elements and attributes of XML-Matcher.
<person xm:regex-dom="true"> <xm:choice> <nickname>C.A.R.</nickname> <xm:group> <first>Tony</first> <last>Hoare</last> </xm:group> </xm:choice> </person>	This template uses regular expressions notation adapted for XML. It will match with actual document where person is defined either by nickname (C.A.R) or using first and last name (Tony Hoare). More about regular expressions in XML Matcher here.
<?javascript asserts.equals ("step[1]", "step[last()]"); ?>	This template uses Javascript processing instructions to assert that values of the first and last step elements are the same.

Complete set of constructs available in XML template is described in Reference Guide.

Features

XML patterns on both DOM structure and text value level.
Regular Expressions on element and text value level (DOM Regex scanner uses Glushkov NFA algorithm).
Javascript-based assertions (based on Rhino JavaScript engine).
Thread-Safe. Multiple instances of Matcher can run in parallel threads.
Customizable. It is very easy to add new matching strategies.

Limitations

Comparison is defined in terms of element tag names, attribute name and values, and element text values. Custom Matcher can be plugged to workaround this limitation.
Mixed content in elements is not supported (an element may have either CDATA text content or children elements, not both).

Resources

Quick start
Reference Guide
FAQ
Javadoc
Download
XML Matcher project resources on sourceforge.net (Users Forum, Bugs Tracker, SVN Access, etc).

Written by Andy Malakov.
Special thanks to Gene Florintsev for the idea of adapting Regex to XML matching.
This library includes software developed by The Apache Software Foundation and Mozilla project.