Compare XML snippets?

Question

Building on another SO question, how can one check whether two well-formed XML snippets are semantically equal. All I need is \"equal\" or not, since I\'m using this for un

Answer 1

Thinking about this problem, I came up with the following solution that renders XML elements comparable and sortable:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
def cmpElement(x, y):
    # compare type
    r = cmp(type(x), type(y))
    if r: return r 
    # compare tag
    r = cmp(x.tag, y.tag)
    if r: return r
    # compare tag attributes
    r = cmp(x.attrib, y.attrib)
    if r: return r
    # compare stripped text content
    xtext = (x.text and x.text.strip()) or None
    ytext = (y.text and y.text.strip()) or None
    r = cmp(xtext, ytext)
    if r: return r
    # compare sorted children
    if len(x) or len(y):
        return cmp(sorted(x.getchildren()), sorted(y.getchildren()))
    return 0

ET._ElementInterface.__lt__ = lambda self, other: cmpElement(self, other) == -1
ET._ElementInterface.__gt__ = lambda self, other: cmpElement(self, other) == 1
ET._ElementInterface.__le__ = lambda self, other: cmpElement(self, other) <= 0
ET._ElementInterface.__ge__ = lambda self, other: cmpElement(self, other) >= 0
ET._ElementInterface.__eq__ = lambda self, other: cmpElement(self, other) == 0
ET._ElementInterface.__ne__ = lambda self, other: cmpElement(self, other) != 0