How to compare any files in Kotlin Compose Desktop application Leave feedback

In this article, we will discuss how to ues GroupDocs.Comparison API Compose Desktop application with Kotlin. After going through this article, you will find it easy to create comparing desktop application that can be run at any desktop platform, as Windows, Linux or Mac. Kotlin Compose is modern and fast-increasing in popularity UI framework. It is usually (for now) used for creating Android applications, but also supports creating Desktop, Web and Multiplatform applications. In this article will not be described how to use Compose in details, as there are lots of information on the internet.

In this article, I will use GroupDocs.Comparison for Java together with Kotlin for creating desktop application. Along with the most used image formats, like PNG, JPG/JPEG, and GIF, there is a wide range of supported file formats for comparison. Additionally, the API allows comparing word-processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, webpages, email messages, source code files, and much more. Moreover, Comparison library can be used to generate preview images for any of supported file formats to display them in your application.

You can easily create Compose project by selecting Kotlin -> Compose Desktop Aplication option in IntelliJ Idea project creation window. You will have to choose project name, location, Build system (Gradle Kotlin is recommended) and Project JDK (15 or above is recommended)

To add Comparison API to your project, fallow next steps:

1. Open build.gradle.kts
2. Go to repositories block and add to it Maven GroupDocs repository

3. Go to dependencies block and add GroupDocs.Comparison library as dependency (it is recommended to use latest version of the library)

4. Refresh project libraries by clicking Reload All Gradle Projects button on Gradle panel of IDE

Now you can work with Comparison API in the project

In order to have opportunity of comparing files in your Desktop application, you need some basic UI elements and functionality. At least, there must be buttons to select source and target documents that would be compared. Also, you need a button, that will run comparison process.

Firstly, create variables, in which you will store source and target document’s paths. The reason of using mutableStateOf and remember can be found in Compose documentation

    val sourcePath = remember { mutableStateOf<String?>(null) }
    val targetPath = remember { mutableStateOf<String?>(null) }

Add button to select source file for comparing. The second button will look the same, just change text and variable. It would be a good idea to surround them with Compose Row or Column and to add some visual styles

Add button to run comparison process

In order to select documents, your application needs file selection dialog. For now, Compose does not have its own dialogs, but don’t forget that we are still in Java. In this way we van use standard Java JFileChooser class.

This function will open dialog to select file and then set file’s path to passed as parameter mutable state. JFileChooser can be configured to filter files by format, to set starting directory and so on.

Comparison API has lots of functionality and settings, but we will use just few percents of it not to make this article too difficult. Comparing files and get the result is just 3 lines of code. To do it, just follow next numbered steps:

1. Create object of Comparer class passing source document path to it.
   • Alternatively, you can create Comparer object passing to it input stream, to avoid saving source file anywhere
   • You can pass LoadOptions("document-password") as the second parameter to compare password-protected document
   • It is possible to pass LoadOptions(true) as the second parameter to create Comparer object using string, instead of file. In this way the first parameter must be a string that will be compared
   • To enable logging, pass object of ComparerSettings class as additional parameter. The class has useful logger field
2. Add the second document path to comparer object using the appropriate add method.
   • All additional options from p.1. are also available here
3. Call the compare method to get the comparison result of both documents.
   • To configure the comparison process, you can pass CompareOptions, SaveOptions or both of them. Here is just a few of settings:
     • Working with document metadata
     • Protecting result document with password
     • Configuring styles of added, deleted, changed parts of documents
     • Changing sensitivity of comparison
     • Enabling/Disabling different types of changes
     • Generating summary page
     • And much more

Here is the code to compare files:

In the code above we use system temporary directory and static method FileType.fromFileNameOrExtension, that detects file type, to create path for saving result file. You can change it to save result file to java output stream. Note: result file here, always has the same name Result. It means that each comparison process will replace previous result document. You can call FileType.getSupportedFileTypes method to get all supported document’s types for the version of Comparison library you have.

Here we are just using JFileChooser save dialog to give user opportunity to select the place where the result file will be saved. After that we are moving the resultant file to the new place. Of course here must be added some checks and notifications, it’s just example.

The minimal application functionality is already implemented. But there are lots of things which can be improved. For example, it is very easy to show source, target and result documents, show each change, give user opportunity to accept or reject any change before saving the document and so on.

Compose Desktop already has painters to show images from resources. But we need additional resource loader to show images from file. Here is just a simple example how it can be done:

And here is the example of using this loader in Compose function:

In order to show resultant document’s pages we need to generate previews for each page. Fortunately, Comparison API has special functionality to do it.

Here is the example of generating preview images:

Class PreviewOptions has options not only to set output image format, but also to specify image’s width, height, pages to process and so on.

As well as generating previews, GroupDocs.Comparison give opportunity to get list of changes and to accept/reject any change. To do it, you need to use method getChanges after calling compare method. You can pass GetChangeOptions to configure filter, but it is not necessary.

As you above, method getChanges returns list of changes, each of which has lots of information, as:

• Unique id of the change
• Change text from resultant document
• Text before changes
• Text after changes
• Coordinates of the box on the page, in which the change is located in document
• List of style changes
• And so on

Most of options are available only after setting the license. You can get a free temporary license in order to use the API without the evaluation limitations.

In this article was shown only few percentage of GroupDocs.Comparison API functionality. To get more information, you can go through the documentation and GitHub repository. Also, on GitHub we have similar example of using Comparison API together with Compose Desktop framework. Reach us on the forum for your questions.

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