Delta.js - A JavaScript diff and patch engine for DOM trees

Requirements

• node.js: Tested with version 0.4.12
• npm: Tested with version 1.0.106
• GNU make

The instructions have been tested on Linux. They probably also work on Mac OS X machines with installed XCode Developer Tools. There is currently no support for Microsoft Windows.

Build instructions for node.js

Delta.js runs within modern web browsers as well as under node.js. In order to use it as a module for node.js based projects, just drop this directory into an appropriate module path. For example the node\_modules folder of your project.

The delta.js source directory is organized as an npm package. Invoking the command npm install will download any dependencies and install them into the directory node\_modules.

It is recommended to verify the installation by running the automated test suite once by invoking make test.

Building AMD modules

In order to build a version suitable for AMD module loaders like dojo or require.js, invoke make amd. The built modules are put into the directory dist/amd.

Building single file browser version

A single-file browser version of the framework can be built using the command make browser. The result is placed into dist/browser/delta.js. Note that this version is not compatible with AMD modules.

Running the command line version

The command line utilities are located in the bin directory. They may be invoked directly without a prior build. There are some sample XML files in test/fixtures which are useful to quickly test the command line interfaces.

Follow this example in order to produce a patch by diffing two versions of an XML file as well as apply it afterwards back to the original version.

./bin/djdiff.js -p xml ./test/fixtures/logo-1.svg ./test/fixtures/logo-2.svg > /tmp/logo-diff.xml
./bin/djpatch.js -p xml ./test/fixtures/logo-1.svg /tmp/logo-diff.xml > /tmp/logo-1-patched.svg

The file /tmp/logo-diff.xml will contain the changes between logo-1.svg and logo-2.svg while the file /tmp/logo-1-patched.svg will contain the same contents as logo-2.svg.

Running the browser based examples

In order to build the examples, invoke make examples. Run node scripts/http.js examples/lcs in order to start a local webserver for the LCS example. Then point your browser at http://localhost:3000 in order to access the LCS web application.

The following examples are available:

• example/lcs A visualization of Myers Longest Common Subsequence algorithm.
• example/xcc A web application allowing to step through the XCC tree matching algorithm.
• example/srcdiff Given two versions of an XML file, this web application will highlight the differencies on the XML source code.
• example/vizmerge/src A web application allowing diffing and selectively merging of changes in XMl documents. This demo application also features a live preview where the effects of a change are shown in realtime.

Bulding the API reference

In order to build the API reference, the Python Documentation Generatior Sphinx and the jsdoc toolkit version 2 is required. After invoking make doc, the directory doc/\_build/html contains the built documentation in HTML format.