Meta

• License: MIT License (MIT)
• Author: yyfjj
• Tags json , diff , delta , compare , structural , jsonpath , cli , ci , config , snapshot
• Requires: Python >=3.8

Classifiers

• Development Status
  • 4 - Beta
• Environment
  • Console
• Intended Audience
  • Developers
• License
  • OSI Approved :: MIT License
• Operating System
  • OS Independent
• Programming Language
  • Python :: 3
• Topic
  • Software Development :: Quality Assurance
  • Utilities

jdelta

A structural diff for two JSON files. git diff and diff work on lines — so reformatting, reordered keys, or a changed indent drown the one value you actually care about in red-and-green noise. jdelta compares the data, not the text, and tells you exactly which values changed, addressed by path. Zero dependencies, no network.

pipinstalljdelta

$jdeltabefore.jsonafter.json

Added(2)
+email"alice@corp.com"
+user.tags[2]"d"

Removed(1)
-legacyId1001

Changed(3)
~user.age30→31
~user.role"viewer"→"admin"
~user.tags[1]"b"→"c"

+2-1~3

This is the Python build. A behavior-equivalent Node build is on npm: npx jdelta (https://github.com/jjdoor/jdelta).

Why

You're reviewing a config change, an API-response snapshot, a tsconfig, a locale file — and the diff is unreadable because someone ran a formatter or the serializer reordered keys. You don't care that line 40 moved to line 12; you care that auth.required flipped to false. jdelta ignores key order and whitespace entirely and reports the actual value-level delta by path.

Usage

jdeltaold.jsonnew.json# human-readable, grouped by added/removed/changed
jdeltaold.jsonnew.json--json# machine-readable
jdeltaold.jsonnew.json--quiet# just the +a -r ~c summary line
jdeltaold.jsonnew.json--exit-code# exit 1 if they differ (CI gate)

Options

How it reads the diff

• Paths. Object keys use dot notation (user.profile.age); array elements use index notation (items[2].price). Keys that aren't plain identifiers — containing dots, spaces or hyphens, or starting with a digit — fall back to quoted brackets: ["order-id"], ["123"].
• Added / Removed / Changed. A key present on only one side is added or removed; a key on both with a different value is changed. A type change (number → string, object → array) is reported as a single changed entry tagged with the kinds — not as an add + remove.
• Arrays are compared by index. xs[2] is compared to xs[2]; a length change shows up as added/removed trailing elements. (Inserting at the front of an array therefore reads as "everything shifted" — index diffing is simple and predictable rather than guessing at moves.)
• Numbers are compared by value (1 and 1.0 are equal). Two caveats follow from how each runtime parses JSON numbers:
  • Float display. Floats are rendered by each runtime's native serializer, so an integral float can show as 1 (Node) or 1.0 (Python), and exotic floats (e.g. 1e-7) may differ in formatting. The detected change is the same.
  • Large integers. JavaScript has no bigint in JSON, so the Node build parses every number as an IEEE-754 double: integers beyond ±2^53 (snowflake IDs, int64 database keys) lose precision and can compare equal when they aren't — so the Node build may miss a change to such a value (and --exit-code won't fire). The Python build keeps integer precision exactly — prefer it for large-integer data.
• Long values are abbreviated in the human view (truncated with … past ~72 characters). --json output is never truncated.

--json shape

{
"added":[{"path":"email","value":"alice@corp.com"}],
"removed":[{"path":"legacyId","value":1001}],
"changed":[{"path":"user.age","from":30,"to":31}],
"summary":{"added":1,"removed":1,"changed":1,"total":3}
}

Exit codes

By default jdelta is a viewer and exits 0; add --exit-code to make it a gate (the git diff --exit-code convention).

License

MIT

Verified details

Maintainers

Unverified details

Project links

• Homepage
• Issues
• Repository

• Download URL: jdelta-0.1.0.tar.gz
• Upload date: Jun 17, 2026
• Size: 10.6 kB
• Tags: Source
• Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
• Uploaded via: twine/6.2.0 CPython/3.11.7

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• Download URL: jdelta-0.1.0-py3-none-any.whl
• Upload date: Jun 17, 2026
• Size: 8.5 kB
• Tags: Python 3
• Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
• Uploaded via: twine/6.2.0 CPython/3.11.7

See more details on using hashes here.