Compare scala.xml.Elem object in unit test

If you want to compare to XML Elem objects ignoring whitespaces you can remove the whitespaces from them with scala.xml.Utility.trim method.

scala> val a = <foo>bar</foo>
a: scala.xml.Elem = <foo>bar</foo>

scala> val b = <foo>   bar   </foo>
b: scala.xml.Elem = <foo>   bar   </foo>

scala> a == b
res8: Boolean = false

scala> import scala.xml.Utility.trim
import scala.xml.Utility.trim

scala> trim(a) == trim(b)
res9: Boolean = true

Scala does not care about the order of the attributes if you use XML literals:

scala> val a = <foo first="1" second="2" />
a: scala.xml.Elem = <foo first="1" second="2"></foo>

scala> val b = <foo second="1" first="1"  />
b: scala.xml.Elem = <foo first="1" second="1"></foo>

scala> a == b
res22: Boolean = true

I would recommend ScalaTest for unit testing there you have the ShouldMatchers:

// Scala repl started with scalatest-1.2.jar in the classpath

scala> val a = <foo>bar</foo>
a: scala.xml.Elem = <foo>bar</foo>

scala> val b = <foo>bar</foo>
b: scala.xml.Elem = <foo>bar</foo>

scala> a should equal(b)

scala> val b = <foo>bar2</foo>
b: scala.xml.Elem = <foo>bar2</foo>

scala> a should equal(b)
org.scalatest.TestFailedException: <foo>bar</foo> did not equal <foo>bar2</foo>
    at org.scalatest.matchers.Matchers$class.newTestFailedException(Matchers.scala:148)
    at org.scalatest.matchers.ShouldMatchers$.newTestFailedException(ShouldMatchers.scala:2329)
    at org.scalatest.matchers.ShouldMatchers$ShouldMethodHelper$.shouldMatcher(ShouldMatchers.scala:871)
    at org.scalatest.matchers.ShouldMatchers$SeqShouldWrapper.should(ShouldMatchers.scala:1724)
    at .<init>(<console>:15)
    at .<clinit>(<console>)
    at RequestResult$.<init>(<console>:9)
    at RequestResult$.<clinit>(<console>)
    at RequestResult$scala_repl_result(<console>)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.Delega...

I modified @Nick's code to work with JDom2. In his code, because of how zip works, if expectedXML has trailing elements that are not in actualXML, the test passes. I fixed that bug, and made the comparison of trailing elements optional:

trait XMLTest extends XMLSupport {
  /** Verify that the XMLs are the same, regardless of attribute or element ordering and ignoring whitespace. */
  def assertEqual(actual: Element, expected: Element, ignoreTrailingElements: Boolean=false): Assertion = {
    // depth-first comparison
    def recurse(actual: Element, expected: Element): Assertion = {
      import scala.collection.JavaConverters._
      val actualChildren: Seq[Element] = actual.getChildren.asScala.sortBy(_.getName)
      val expectedChildren: Seq[Element] = expected.getChildren.asScala.sortBy(_.getName)
      (actualChildren zip expectedChildren) foreach { case (actualChild, expectedChild) =>
        recurse(actualChild, expectedChild)
      }
      actual.getName shouldEqual expected.getName
      actual.getTextNormalize shouldEqual expected.getTextNormalize
      actual.getAttributes.asScala.map(_.toString).sorted shouldEqual expected.getAttributes.asScala.map(_.toString).sorted
      if (!ignoreTrailingElements && actualChildren.size < expectedChildren.size) {
        val diff = expectedChildren.drop(actualChildren.size)
        fail("Extra XML children found: " + prettyPrint(diff))
      } else succeed
    }

    recurse(actual, expected)
  }
}

I wrote this trait to mix into the test code:

trait XMLSupport {
  import org.jdom2.output.{Format, XMLOutputter}

  def prettyPrint(doc: Document): String = {
    val xmlOutput = new XMLOutputter()
    xmlOutput.setFormat(Format.getPrettyFormat)
    xmlOutput.outputString(doc)
  }

  def prettyPrint(elements: Seq[Element]): String = {
    import scala.collection.JavaConverters._

    val xmlOutput = new XMLOutputter()
    xmlOutput.setFormat(Format.getPrettyFormat)
    xmlOutput.outputString(elements.asJava)
  }
}

I invoked the test this way:

class XmlTest extends WordSpec with MustMatchers {
  // test code here
  assertEqual(actualXML.getRootElement, expectedXML.getRootElement, ignoreTrailingElements=true)
}

Use the version of assertTrue that allows passing custom messages

public static void assertTrue(java.lang.String message,
                              boolean condition)

and (for example) diff to produce the string with the descendand nodes that aren't equal

scala> val xml1 = <person><name>john</name><lastname>smith</lastname></person>
xml1: scala.xml.Elem = <person><name>john</name><lastname>smith</lastname></person>

scala> val xml2 = <person><name>jane</name><lastname>smith</lastname></person>
xml2: scala.xml.Elem = <person><name>jane</name><lastname>smith</lastname></person>

scala> assert(xml1 == xml2, xml1.child diff xml2.child mkString(", "))
java.lang.AssertionError: assertion failed: <name>john</name>
        at scala.Predef$.assert(Predef.scala:91)
        at .<init>(<console>:8)
        at .<clinit>(<console>)

The earlier answers were helpful to me, though I found that sometimes I wanted to check a larger chunk of XML and the failure comparison showing both chunks of XML was a bit hard to read. This method will try to recurse down into child elements first to compare those, so if a deeply nested element is incorrect it will show a much more concise error. Depending on your XML this might not give you enough context to work out where it's actually failing, but I find it useful.

/** Check that the XMLs are the same, ignoring empty text nodes (whitespace). */
private def assertEqual(actual: xml.Node, expected: xml.Node) {

    def recurse(actual: xml.Node, expected: xml.Node) {
        // depth-first checks, to get specific failures
        for ((actualChild, expectedChild) <- actual.child zip expected.child) {
            recurse(actualChild, expectedChild)
        }
        actual should be (expected)
    }

    recurse(scala.xml.Utility.trim(actual), scala.xml.Utility.trim(expected))

}