Overview (XMLUnit for Java 2.4.0 API)

XMLUnit Core 2.4.0
Package	Description
org.xmlunit	XMLUnit helps testing code that creates XML.
org.xmlunit.builder	Provides fluent builders for core parts of XMLUnit.
org.xmlunit.diff	Contains XMLUnit `DifferenceEngine` that is at the heart of all comparisons as well as supporting interfaces and implementations.
org.xmlunit.input	Some useful `Source` implementations.
org.xmlunit.transform	XSLT convenience layer.
org.xmlunit.util	Internal utilities hiding the differences between .NET and Java implementations.
org.xmlunit.validation	Validation of XML documents and schemas.
org.xmlunit.xpath	XPath convenience layer.

XMLUnit Hamcrest Matchers 2.4.0
Package	Description
org.xmlunit.matchers	Hamcrest matchers on top of XMLUnit's core.

XMLUnit Legacy 2.4.0
Package	Description
org.custommonkey.xmlunit	Root of the XMLUnit 1.x compatibility layer.
org.custommonkey.xmlunit.examples
org.custommonkey.xmlunit.exceptions
org.custommonkey.xmlunit.jaxp13
org.custommonkey.xmlunit.util

XMLUnit helps testing code that creates XML.

XMLUnit for Java is separated into two jars:

xmlunit-core contains all algorithms and classes needed to validate XML, perform XPath queries or compare two pieces of XML.
xmlunit-matchers contains Hamcrest matchers on top of xmlunit-core.

While XMLUnit is focussed on testing, parts of it may be useful in different contexts as well. The DifferenceEngine may be the driver behind a visual XML diff tool for example.

The main use case of XMLUnit is comparing XML generated by the code under test with some known source of "good XML". This is the responsibility of the DifferenceEngine and its main (currently sole) implementation DOMDifferenceEngine.

Sometimes a full comparison is more than is needed in which case only parts of the generated document are validated using XPaths. This is the responsibility of XPathEngine and its implementation JAXPXPathEngine.

The validation package contains everything needed to validate documents against XML Schema (or even the schema document itself) or a DTD. Based of JAXP's validation package the JAXPValidator class should be able to validate against different schema languages as well if you provided it with the needed implementations.

The builder package contains fluent builders that may provide an API that is more convenient to use in many cases.

A third jar xmlunit-legacy provides an API compatible to XMLUnit for Java 1.x that is implemented on top of XMLUnit Core.

XMLUnit for Java is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. The legacy jar uses the three clause BSD license, the same license as XMLUnit for Java 1.x did.