python json diff ignore order

How to compare two JSON objects with the same elements in a different order equal?

stackoverflow.com › questions › 25851183 › how-to-compare-two-json-objects-with-the-same-elements-in-a-different-order-equa

If you want two objects with the same elements but in a different order to compare equal, then the obvious thing to do is compare sorted copies of them - for instance, for the dictionaries represented by your JSON strings a and b:

import json

a = json.loads("""
{
    "errors": [
        {"error": "invalid", "field": "email"},
        {"error": "required", "field": "name"}
    ],
    "success": false
}
""")

b = json.loads("""
{
    "success": false,
    "errors": [
        {"error": "required", "field": "name"},
        {"error": "invalid", "field": "email"}
    ]
}
""")

>>> sorted(a.items()) == sorted(b.items())
False

... but that doesn't work, because in each case, the "errors" item of the top-level dict is a list with the same elements in a different order, and sorted() doesn't try to sort anything except the "top" level of an iterable.

To fix that, we can define an ordered function which will recursively sort any lists it finds (and convert dictionaries to lists of (key, value) pairs so that they're orderable):

def ordered(obj):
    if isinstance(obj, dict):
        return sorted((k, ordered(v)) for k, v in obj.items())
    if isinstance(obj, list):
        return sorted(ordered(x) for x in obj)
    else:
        return obj

If we apply this function to a and b, the results compare equal:

>>> ordered(a) == ordered(b)
True

Answer from Zero Piraeus on Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow

stackoverflow.com › questions › 25851183 › how-to-compare-two-json-objects-with-the-same-elements-in-a-different-order-equa

python - How to compare two JSON objects with the same elements in a different order equal? - Stack Overflow

Top answer

1 of 12

224

import json

a = json.loads("""
{
    "errors": [
        {"error": "invalid", "field": "email"},
        {"error": "required", "field": "name"}
    ],
    "success": false
}
""")

b = json.loads("""
{
    "success": false,
    "errors": [
        {"error": "required", "field": "name"},
        {"error": "invalid", "field": "email"}
    ]
}
""")

>>> sorted(a.items()) == sorted(b.items())
False

To fix that, we can define an ordered function which will recursively sort any lists it finds (and convert dictionaries to lists of (key, value) pairs so that they're orderable):

def ordered(obj):
    if isinstance(obj, dict):
        return sorted((k, ordered(v)) for k, v in obj.items())
    if isinstance(obj, list):
        return sorted(ordered(x) for x in obj)
    else:
        return obj

If we apply this function to a and b, the results compare equal:

>>> ordered(a) == ordered(b)
True

2 of 12

Another way could be to use json.dumps(X, sort_keys=True) option:

import json
a, b = json.dumps(a, sort_keys=True), json.dumps(b, sort_keys=True)
a == b # a normal string comparison

This works for nested dictionaries and lists.

TutorialsPoint

tutorialspoint.com › how-to-compare-json-objects-regardless-of-order-in-python

How to Compare JSON Objects Regardless of Order in Python?

In the above example, we utilized the json.loads method provided by Python's built?in json module to convert the JSON objects json_obj1 and json_obj2 to dictionaries. subsequently, we compared the two dictionaries using the == operator. ... The JSON objects are equal. The output of the code signifies that despite the elements of the two JSON objects being in different orders, they are equal.

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