"Ignore nodes by Xpath" in Compare Directories

[paul1234]

Hello,

I'm trying to merge two different versions of a large number of XML documents. The header and one other node of version 1 however should remain as they are. When using the "Compare files" functionality, this works nicely, because I can specify an Xpath to ignore the header and the other node. This is respected when merging the changes from version 2 into version 1 using the "Copy all changes from right to left" function.

Since I have about 1000 documents to process, I thought I would use the "Compare directories" functionality to process them all in one go. This time however, the "Ignore nodes by Xpath" seems to only be used for the diff comparison. When I use the "Copy change from right to left", all version 1 files get replaced entirely by version 2. Is this expected behaviour? If so, would there be any other way to achieve my goal?

Thanks,

Paul

[tavy]

Hello Paul,

The "Ignore nodes by Xpath" option is available only for Diff Files. We do not have support in Diff Directories to merge the contents of the files and ignore some nodes. The only way to merge the contents of the files and ignore nodes is by using the Diff Files.
I will add an issue on our issue tracker to analyze this use case.
Thank you for feedback.

Best Regards,
Octavian

[hutz]

Bumping this thread for related question. Using 19.1.

Can oXygen can provide me with tree compare (elements only, no attributes) at directory level?
I already ignore everything under XML Diff > Node/Type but this targets Files compare.

Thanks.

[Radu]

Hi,

Did you set an ignore XPath expression in the Oxygen Preferences->"Diff / Files Comparison" page? Indeed this is not taken into account when the "Compare Directories" tool is comparing files. We have an issue registered for this.
If I did not understand your use case maybe you could give me more details.

Regards,
Radu

[hutz]

Thanks Radu for confirming this is ongoing.

[kevin1234]

This feature is still relevant.
In fact, it would be the only reason for me to buy your product.

I hope this feature will come at least as an optional setting in the future.

[tavy]

Hello,

This feature is not so easy to implement, but we have in plan to implement it in the future. Maybe we will have this implemented in the Compare Directories script. I added your comment on the issue and I increased its priority.
Thanks for your feedback.

Best Regards,
Octavian

[kevin1234]

Thank you for your feedback.
Your hyperlink is unfortunately not working for me.
Is it some internal documentation?

[tavy]

I corrected the hyperlink, there was a wrong character added at the end in the link.

[teo]

The recently released version 27 of the Oxygen suite comes with news regarding the feature(s) requested on this thread.

Ignore Nodes by XPath option supported in directory comparisons
The Ignore Nodes by XPath option, and the XPath expression provided for this purpose, in the File Comparison preferences page are now taken into account when comparing directories by invoking the tool.
The option is accessible via the Directory Compare tool.

XPath expressions to exclude nodes supported in Compare Directories script
A previous limitation was solved for the Compare Directories command-line script making it now possible to use the -enx XPathExprToExcludeNodes argument.
It allows you to specify an XPath expression that will exclude certain nodes from the comparison.
This option can now be used without any limitation, regardless of the format chosen for the comparison report.

Regards,
Teo