How to compare two or more files in Java or Kotlin Leave feedback

Document comparison is one of the most common requirements for today’s world. Whether it is to compare word files, compare excel files, presentations, PDF documents or even compare text files or any other document format, accuracy is the key factor while comparing.

This article will give you the idea, how GroupDocs.Comparison facilitates programmers to compare any two or more documents in many ways. On-Premise APIs of GroupDocs.Comparison are currently available for .NET and Java, however, this article is inclined towards Java or Kotlin developers.

GroupDocs.Comparison for Java allows developers to compare two documents (in fact more than 2). The resulting document shows the changes between the two files in comparison. Below shown code how you can compare two excel files in just 3 lines of code in Java or Kotlin.

• Instantiate the Comparer object with the source document path or stream.
• Call add method to specify the target(s) document path(s).
• Call the compare method to run comparison process.

Comparing excel spreadsheets or Microsoft Word documents are just among the subset of documents formats that are supported by the Java API of GroupDocs.Comparison. Below is the list of supported formats. You can visit the documentation to stay updated.

After the release of GroupDocs.Comparison for Java 20.4, the API now supports:

• Comparison of more than two Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice spreadsheets (XLS, XLSX, ODS, CSV, …)
• Compare multiple Microsoft OneNote documents

The API already supports the comparison of multiple files for various document formats. Following code snippet shows how easy, multiple excel files can be compared in Java or Kotlin

As a programmer, you are not only allowed to compare documents that are available on local disk, but also you can compare documents from streams.

• Just create the Comparer object with the source document stream.
• Add all target documents to compare using the add method of Comparer object.
• Call the compare method to write result document into output stream.

Password protection is common in the official documentation. Using the document comparison Java API, allows its users/developers to compare password-protected documents.

Just a little change in the code of comparing documents that are not password-protected. While loading the document, use LoadOptions to specify the document password. Below is the sample comparison code for your assistance.

One step ahead of just comparing, using the code similar to the mentioned below, you can compare multiple documents with your customized comparison settings.

CompareOptions provides you the opportunity to specify your comparison options like font styling for detected changes etc.

GroupDocs continuously increasing the support to compare more file formats. After the release v 20.4, you can now also compare JSON files using Java API. Following are the programming language file formats that are recently added to the supported document formats list:

You can build your own application using the above-highlighted features. We will be delighted if you contact us on the forum to discuss, solving a problem, or share your feedback.

• How to compare files in Java or Kotlin
• How to compare images using Java or Kotlin
• How to compare Text, Word or PDF in Java or Kotlin
• How to spot photos differences in Java or Kotlin
• How to compare any files using Compose Desktop