Deterministic

[Eli Golovinsky]

I'm new to XML so forgive me if this is a stupid question.

From what I know there is no way to predict what will be the order of

the nodes in a generated XML file. The same data of the same structure
can result in different XML files (when compared as text files), though
they will contain the same data.

I need to be able to use common test comparison and merging tools on
the XML files I generate. Is there any way to do this?

Eli.

 

[Martin Honnen]

Eli Golovinsky wrote:

From what I know there is no way to predict what will be the order of
the nodes in a generated XML file. The same data of the same structure
can result in different XML files (when compared as text files), though
they will contain the same data.

XML has order, the order of child nodes matters, only attributes are not
ordered so in the XML sense
<element att1="value 1" att2="value 2" />
and
<element att2="value 2" att1="value 1" />
represent the same information.

Of course I don't know how you generate the XML but order of child nodes
matters.