Diff¶

Description

The Diff component allows comparing two web pages, returning the differences between them in terms of the HTML code obtained.

Input Parameters

This component has the following input parameters. On one hand, a character string, “Original page source code”, which will contain the source code of the homepage. The page with which it is compared can be entered in two different ways: either as a character string that contains the page code (“Current page source code”) or as a page-type object (“Current Page”) such as that returned by the Sequence component. If this last option is used, its base URL will be used as the base URL of the output HTML code.

Output Values

The component returns a character string that contains the HTML code of a page that displays the differences between the pages entered as component input parameters.

Using the Component

In some cases, the decisions to take in the Web automation process must be based not on the records obtained but rather on changes to the pages through which the process browses. To do so, the Diff component allows finding the differences between two HTML pages (generally, the same page at two different times). Therefore, based on the input information, the component can be configured with the following parameters, as shown in Diff Editor.

Diff Editor¶

• Prefix for new content: This text box indicates the prefix to use on generating the results page for the new contents (green HTML tag by default).

• Suffix for new content: This text box indicates the suffix to use on generating the results page for the new contents (green HTML tag by default).

• Show removed content: This check box indicates whether the prefix and suffix configuration for the deleted contents is required. This means that if this option is not marked, the deleted parts will not be displayed. Depending on this option, the following two options may or may not be enabled.

• Prefix for removed content: This text box indicates the prefix to use on generating the results page for the deleted contents (red HTML tag by default).

• Suffix for removed content: This text box indicates the suffix to use on generating the results page for the new contents (red HTML tag by default).

• Case sensitive: This indicates whether the marking of changes is case sensitive. This is not selected by default.

• Ignore tag attributes: This check box configures whether the HTML tag attributes are to be ignored when the pages are compared. This means that two HTML tags with different values for their attributes will be considered as equal. This does not affect the results HTML page generation process. This option is not selected by default.

• Return null if page has not changed: This check box (marked by default) indicates that, if the results page is equal to any of the two input pages, the component returns “null” instead of the page itself.