Google diff-match-patch : How to unpatch to get Original String? - google-diff-match-patch

Question

I am using Google diff-match-patch JAVA plugin to create patch between two JSON strings and storing the patch to database.
diff_match_patch dmp = new diff_match_patch();
LinkedList<Patch> diffs = dmp.patch_make(latestString, originalString);
String patch = dmp.patch_toText(diffs); // Store patch to DB
Now is there any way to use this patch to re-create the originalString by passing the latestString?
I google about this and found this very old comment # Google diff-match-patch Wiki saying,
Unpatching can be done by just looping through the diff, swapping
DIFF_INSERT with DIFF_DELETE, then applying the patch.
But i did not find any useful code that demonstrates this. How could i achieve this with my existing code ? Any pointers or code reference would be appreciated.
Edit:
The problem i am facing is, in the front-end i am showing a revisions module that shows all the transactions of a particular fragment (take for example an employee details), like which user has updated what details etc. Now i am recreating the fragment JSON by reverse applying each patch to get the current transaction data and show it as a table (using http://marianoguerra.github.io/json.human.js/). But some JSON data are not valid JSON and I am getting JSON.parse error.

Answer 1

I was looking to do something similar (in C#) and what is working for me with a relatively simple object is the patch_apply method. This use case seems somewhat missing from the documentation, so I'm answering here. Code is C# but the API is cross language:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var dmp = new diff_match_patch();
string v1 = "My Json Object;
string v2 = "My Mutated Json Object"
var v2ToV1Patch = dmp.patch_make(v2, v1);
var v2ToV1PatchText = dmp.patch_toText(v2ToV1Patch); // Persist text to db
string v3 = "Latest version of JSON object;
var v3ToV2Patch = dmp.patch_make(v3, v2);
var v3ToV2PatchTxt = dmp.patch_toText(v3ToV2Patch); // Persist text to db
// Time to re-hydrate the objects
var altV3ToV2Patch = dmp.patch_fromText(v3ToV2PatchTxt);
var altV2 = dmp.patch_apply(altV3ToV2Patch, v3)[0].ToString(); // .get(0) in Java I think
var altV2ToV1Patch = dmp.patch_fromText(v2ToV1PatchText);
var altV1 = dmp.patch_apply(altV2ToV1Patch, altV2)[0].ToString();
}
I am attempting to retrofit this as an audit log, where previously the entire JSON object was saved. As the audited objects have become more complex the storage requirements have increased dramatically. I haven't yet applied this to the complex large objects, but it is possible to check if the patch was successful by checking the second object in the array returned by the patch_apply method. This is an array of boolean values, all of which should be true if the patch worked correctly. You could write some code to check this, which would help check if the object can be successfully re-hydrated from the JSON rather than just getting a parsing error. My prototype C# method looks like this:
private static bool ValidatePatch(object[] patchResult, out string patchedString)
{
patchedString = patchResult[0] as string;
var successArray = patchResult[1] as bool[];
foreach (var b in successArray)
{
if (!b)
return false;
}
return true;
}