If your shell supports process substitution (Bash-style follows, see docs):
diff <(jq --sort-keys . A.json) <(jq --sort-keys . B.json)
Objects key order will be ignored, but array order will still matter. It is possible to work-around that, if desired, by sorting array values in some other way, or making them set-like (e.g. ["foo", "bar"] → {"foo": null, "bar": null}; this will also remove duplicates).
Alternatively, substitute diff for some other comparator, e.g. cmp, colordiff, or vimdiff, depending on your needs. If all you want is a yes or no answer, consider using cmp and passing --compact-output to jq to not format the output for a potential small performance increase.
If your shell supports process substitution (Bash-style follows, see docs):
diff <(jq --sort-keys . A.json) <(jq --sort-keys . B.json)
Objects key order will be ignored, but array order will still matter. It is possible to work-around that, if desired, by sorting array values in some other way, or making them set-like (e.g. ["foo", "bar"] → {"foo": null, "bar": null}; this will also remove duplicates).
Alternatively, substitute diff for some other comparator, e.g. cmp, colordiff, or vimdiff, depending on your needs. If all you want is a yes or no answer, consider using cmp and passing --compact-output to jq to not format the output for a potential small performance increase.
Use jd with the -set option:
No output means no difference.
$ jd -set A.json B.json
Differences are shown as an @ path and + or -.
$ jd -set A.json C.json
@ ["People",{}]
+ "Carla"
The output diffs can also be used as patch files with the -p option.
$ jd -set -o patch A.json C.json; jd -set -p patch B.json
{"City":"Boston","People":["John","Carla","Bryan"],"State":"MA"}
https://github.com/josephburnett/jd#command-line-usage
Use jq to first sort all keys. Then diff to do the diffing:
jq -S . A.json > A-sorted.json
jq -S . B.json > B-sorted.json
diff A-sorted.json B-sorted.json
The above example is for Linux but both jq and diff is available for Windows.
It seems Windows has an alternative diff tool called fc, perhaps this could be used instead of diff.
QT JSON Diff [Github] might be for you:
- They have a Windows build (see "Win64" in the releases)
- It is gratis, MIT license
- It works offline, as an EXE which runs locally
- can sort objects inside arrays so that order matters less
To compare json files you should convert them so they have same order of keys. Very good tool for this job is jq (https://stedolan.github.io/jq/) where you can do:
jq -S . fileA.json > fileA_fmt.json
jq -S . fileB.json > fileB_fmt.json
then, you can use your favourite tool for text file comparison. I like kdiff3 for GUI or just plain diff when in pure command-line e.g.:
diff fileA_fmt.json fileB_fmt.json
Just use diff. Like in
diff --unified file1.json file2.json