Graphtage

Graphtage is a command-line utility and underlying library for semantically comparing and merging tree-like structures, such as JSON, JSON5, XML, HTML, YAML, TOML, INI, CSV, plist, and Python pickle files. Its name is a portmanteau of “graph” and “graftage”—the latter being the horticultural practice of joining two trees together such that they grow as one.

$ echo Original: && cat original.json && echo Modified: && cat modified.json

Original:
{
    "foo": [1, 2, 3, 4],
    "bar": "testing"
}
Modified:
{
    "foo": [2, 3, 4, 5],
    "zab": "testing",
    "woo": ["foobar"]
}

$ graphtage original.json modified.json

{
    "foo": [
        1̶,̶
        2,
        3,
        4,̟
        5̟
    ],
    "b̶z̟ar̶b̟": "testing",̟
    "̟w̟o̟o̟"̟:̟ ̟[̟
        "̟f̟o̟o̟b̟a̟r̟"̟
    ]̟
}

Installation

Graphtage requires Python 3.10 or later. It is tested against Python 3.10 through 3.14.

$ pip3 install graphtage

Installing the package puts two commands on your PATH: graphtage, the diff utility, and graphtage-git-diff, the external diff driver described in Git Integration.

To work on Graphtage itself, install the dev extra, which adds pytest, Ruff, and Sphinx:

$ pip3 install 'graphtage[dev]'

Command Line Usage

Input File Types

Graphtage infers the type of each input file from its extension. To state the type instead of inferring it, use --from-<type> for the first file and --to-<type> for the second. Both flags exist for every format Graphtage supports: csv, html, ini, json, json5, pickle, plist, toml, xml, and yaml. For example, to read a JSON document whose name does not end in .json:

$ graphtage --from-json config.txt config.json

--from-mime and --to-mime do the same thing but take a MIME type rather than a format name, which matters for the formats that Graphtage registers under more than one type. Run graphtage --help for the accepted values.

Output Formatting

Graphtage performs an analysis on an intermediate representation of the trees that is divorced from the filetypes of the input files. This means, for example, that you can diff a JSON file against a YAML file. Also, the output format can be different from the input format(s). By default, Graphtage will format the output diff in the same file format as the first input file. But one could, for example, diff two JSON files and format the output in YAML. There are several command-line arguments to specify these transformations, such as --format; please check the --help output for more information.

Graphtage sorts the keys of every dictionary it reads, so the output orders keys alphabetically no matter how the input files order them. The examples in this section all render the file {"foo": [1, 2, 3], "bar": "baz"} diffed against itself.

By default, Graphtage pretty-prints its output with as many line breaks and indents as possible.

{
    "bar": "baz",
    "foo": [
        1,
        2,
        3
    ]
}

Use the --join-lists or -jl option to suppress linebreaks after list items:

{
    "bar": "baz",
    "foo": [1, 2, 3]
}

Likewise, use the --join-dict-items or -jd option to suppress linebreaks after key/value pairs in a dict:

{"bar": "baz", "foo": [
    1,
    2,
    3
]}

Use --condensed or -j to apply both of these options:

{"bar": "baz", "foo": [1, 2, 3]}

The --only-edits or -e option will print out a list of edits rather than applying them to the input file in place.

The --edit-digest or -d option is like --only-edits but prints a more concise context for each edit that is more human-readable.

Matching Options

By default, Graphtage matches the values of key/value pairs that share a key, and tries to match all possible pairs of the remaining elements.

Matching two dictionaries with each other is hard. Although computationally tractable, this can sometimes be onerous for input files with huge dictionaries. Graphtage has three different strategies for matching dictionaries:

1. --dict-strategy match (the most computationally expensive) tries to match all pairs of keys and values between the two dictionaries, resulting in a match of minimum edit distance;
2. --dict-strategy none (the least computationally expensive) will not attempt to match any key/value pairs unless they have the exact same key; and
3. --dict-strategy auto (the default) will automatically match the values of any key-value pairs that have identical keys and then use the match strategy for the remainder of key/value pairs.

--dict-strategy also has the short form -ds. The --no-key-edits or -k option is equivalent to --dict-strategy none.

See Pull Request #51 for some examples of how these strategies affect output.

The --no-list-edits or -l option will not consider interstitial insertions and removals when comparing two lists. The --no-list-edits-when-same-length or -ll option is a less drastic version of -l that will behave normally for lists that are of different lengths but behave like -l for lists that are of the same length.

The --ignore-list-order option matches the elements of a list as an unordered collection, so moving an element within a list is not an edit:

$ graphtage --ignore-list-order original.json modified.json

Duplicate elements still count. With this option, [1, 1, 2] matches [2, 1, 1] but not [1, 2, 2].

This option applies to the lists of every format Graphtage reads, with two exceptions: the rows of a CSV file and the children of an XML or HTML element stay ordered. Those two node types ignore --no-list-edits as well.

Two lists whose elements all match each other cost nothing to compare, however long they are. Comparing two lists that differ is more expensive than the ordered comparison, and grows faster: matching 30 dictionaries where every element differs took about 30 seconds in one measurement, against 0.7 seconds without the option. Graphtage logs a warning when a comparison is large enough for this to matter.

--ignore-list-order cannot be combined with --no-list-edits or --no-list-edits-when-same-length, because those two options apply only to ordered lists.

Match Constraints

The --match-unless or -u and --match-if or -m options take an expression that decides whether Graphtage may pair two nodes. Graphtage evaluates the expression once for each pair of nodes it considers, with from bound to the plain Python value of the node from the first file and to bound to the plain Python value of the node from the second. --match-unless refuses the pair when the expression is true; --match-if refuses it unless the expression is true. A refused pair is reported as a wholesale replacement rather than compared element by element.

Expressions are parsed by the graphtage.expressions module rather than by eval. They support arithmetic and comparison operators, indexing, attribute lookup, and calls to a fixed set of builtins such as len and sorted.

Say two files describe the same two servers, each identified by an id:

$ echo Original: && cat servers.json && echo Modified: && cat servers.new.json

Original:
{
    "primary": {"id": 1, "host": "alpha"},
    "replica": {"id": 2, "host": "beta"}
}
Modified:
{
    "primary": {"id": 1, "host": "alphas"},
    "replica": {"id": 3, "host": "gamma"}
}

By default Graphtage pairs the two replica records and reports the differences between them, even though they describe different servers:

$ graphtage servers.json servers.new.json

{
    "primary": {
        "host": "alpha++s++",
        "id": 1
    },
    "replica": {
        "host": "~~bet~~++gamm++a",
        "id": 2 -> 3
    }
}

Refusing to pair records whose id differs reports the second record as replaced instead:

$ graphtage --match-unless "from['id'] != to['id']" servers.json servers.new.json

{
    "primary": {
        "host": "alpha++s++",
        "id": 1
    },
    "replica": {
        "host": "beta",
        "id": 2
    } -> {
        "host": "gamma",
        "id": 3
    }
}

The same constraint written with --match-if produces the same diff:

$ graphtage --match-if "from['id'] == to['id']" servers.json servers.new.json

{
    "primary": {
        "host": "alpha++s++",
        "id": 1
    },
    "replica": {
        "host": "beta",
        "id": 2
    } -> {
        "host": "gamma",
        "id": 3
    }
}

Graphtage applies the constraint to every node in the tree, not only to the dictionaries the expression was written for. A pair for which the expression raises an error is left unconstrained, which is what lets the expression above constrain the two records without also constraining the strings and integers underneath them, where subscripting by 'id' has no meaning.

Because of that, an expression that raises for every pair constrains nothing at all. If a constraint appears to have no effect, run the same command with --debug, which logs the error Graphtage caught for each pair it skipped.

ANSI Color

By default, Graphtage will only use ANSI color in its output if it is run from a TTY. If, for example, you would like to have Graphtage emit colorized output from a script or pipe, use the --color or -c argument. To disable color even when running on a TTY, use --no-color.

HTML Output

Graphtage can optionally emit the diff in HTML with the --html option.

$ graphtage --html original.json modified.json > diff.html

Status and Logging

By default, Graphtage prints status messages and a progress bar to STDERR. To suppress this, use the --no-status option. To additionally suppress all but critical log messages, use --quiet. Fine-grained control of log messages is via the --log-level option. --debug is equivalent to --log-level=DEBUG, and --quiet is equivalent to --log-level=CRITICAL --no-status.

Environment Variables

GRAPHTAGE_BATCH_BACKEND pins the backend that computes Levenshtein distances in batch. Graphtage picks one by batch size: python prices a single pair at a time, and numpy advances a whole batch through one array pass per row. Both return identical distances, so set this variable only to benchmark one backend against the other, or to work around a problem with the automatic choice.

Value	Effect
python	Price every pair one at a time.
numpy	Always use the batched scan.
unset	Pick by batch size. This is the default.

An unrecognized value raises a ValueError rather than falling back to a default.

Version Information

--version or -v writes a line such as Graphtage version 0.5.0 to STDERR. If you pass it without any input files, Graphtage prints the version and exits; if you pass input files as well, it prints the version and then computes the diff. -dumpversion writes the raw version to STDOUT and exits without reading any input.

Exit Status

graphtage exits with one of three statuses, so a script can tell the three outcomes apart:

Status	Meaning
0	The two inputs are semantically identical.
1	The two inputs differ.
2	Graphtage could not compute a diff, for example because a file did not parse or its type was not recognized.

Interrupting Graphtage with SIGINT returns -2, which a POSIX shell reports as 254.

Because a status of 1 means "the inputs differ" rather than "something went wrong", a CI job that treats any non-zero status as a failure will fail on every diff Graphtage finds. Test for 2 to detect an error.

Git Integration

Graphtage installs a graphtage-git-diff command that implements git's external diff interface, so git diff can render changes to structured files semantically.

Git passes a diff driver seven arguments: the path of the file in the repository, followed by the two revisions to compare along with their hashes and modes. At least one of those revisions is a temporary copy whose name does not necessarily carry the original file extension, and Graphtage detects file types from extensions, so graphtage-git-diff takes the file type from the repository path rather than from the files it compares.

To set the driver up, define it in your git configuration:

$ git config --global diff.graphtage.command graphtage-git-diff

Then assign it in .gitattributes to the file types you want Graphtage to handle:

$ cat .gitattributes

*.json diff=graphtage
*.yaml diff=graphtage

git diff now formats changes to those files with Graphtage:

$ git diff

original.json
{
    "foo": [
        ~~1~~,
        2,
        3,
        4,
        ++5++
    ],
    "~~b~~++z++a~~r~~++b++": "testing",
    ++"woo": [
        "foobar"
    ]++
}

$ git diff -- deploy.yaml

deploy.yaml
name: graphtage
ports: 
- 8080
- ++8443++
replicas: 2 -> 5

Assign the driver only to extensions that Graphtage supports. Git stops a diff at the first file its driver fails on, so a driver assigned to every file fails as soon as it reaches one whose type Graphtage does not recognize.

To try the driver without changing any configuration, set GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF for a single command:

$ GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF=graphtage-git-diff git diff

git log and git show do not run external diff drivers unless you pass --ext-diff:

$ git log --patch --ext-diff

To pass Graphtage options through the driver, add them to the command. Spell the value of each option with an equals sign, because git appends its own arguments and a value passed as a separate argument is indistinguishable from the first of them:

$ git config --global diff.graphtage.command 'graphtage-git-diff --color --format=yaml'

Use --color or -c when git sends the diff to a pager. Graphtage suppresses the Unicode marks that distinguish the two sides of a change when its output is not a terminal, and a pager reads from a pipe. The marks survive the pipe, but the ANSI colors do not.

Git stops the whole diff when a driver exits with a non-zero status, so graphtage-git-diff exits with a status of zero whether or not it finds differences. It reserves a non-zero status for failures that leave it with nothing to print, such as an unsupported file type or a file that does not parse. Graphtage compares two revisions, so the driver reports a file that a commit adds or deletes instead of diffing it.

You can also run Graphtage from git difftool, which supplies the path of the file in $MERGED and the two revisions in $LOCAL and $REMOTE. graphtage-git-diff ignores the hash and mode arguments, so a . stands in for each of them:

$ git config --global difftool.graphtage.cmd 'graphtage-git-diff "$MERGED" "$LOCAL" . . "$REMOTE" . .'
$ git difftool --no-prompt --tool=graphtage

Why does Graphtage exist?

Diffing tree-like structures with unordered elements is tough. Say you want to compare two JSON files. There are limited tools available, which are effectively equivalent to canonicalizing the JSON (e.g., sorting dictionary elements by key) and performing a standard diff. This is not always sufficient. For example, if a key in a dictionary is changed but its value is not, a traditional diff will conclude that the entire key/value pair was replaced by the new one, even though the only change was the key itself. See our documentation for more information.

Using Graphtage as a Library

Graphtage has a complete API for programmatically operating its diffing capabilities. When using Graphtage as a library, it is also capable of diffing in-memory Python objects. This can be useful for debugging Python code, for example, to determine a differential between two objects. See our documentation for more information.

Extending Graphtage

Graphtage is designed to be extensible: New filetypes can easily be defined, as well as new node types, edit types, formatters, and printers. See our documentation for more information.

Complete API documentation is available here.

License and Acknowledgements

This research was developed by Trail of Bits with partial funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the SafeDocs program as a subcontractor to Galois. It is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0. Contact us if you're looking for an exception to the terms. © 2020–2026, Trail of Bits.