Examples

With JSONAssertify, you write and maintain something like this:

JSONObject data = getRESTData("/friends/367.json");
String expected = "{friends:[{id:123,name:\"Corby Page\"},{id:456,name:\"Carter Page\"}]}";
JSONAssert.assertEquals(expected, data, false);

… instead of all this:

JSONObject data = getRESTData("/friends/367.json");
Assert.assertTrue(data.has("friends"));
Object friendsObject = data.get("friends");
Assert.assertTrue(friendsObject instanceof JSONArray);
JSONArray friends = (JSONArray) friendsObject;
Assert.assertEquals(2, data.length());
JSONObject friend1Obj = friends.getJSONObject(data.get(0));
Assert.true(friend1Obj.has("id"));
Assert.true(friend1Obj.has("name"));
JSONObject friend2Obj = friends.getJSONObject(data.get(1));
Assert.true(friend2Obj.has("id"));
Assert.true(friend2Obj.has("name"));
if ("Carter Page".equals(friend1Obj.getString("name"))) {
    Assert.assertEquals(123, friend1Obj.getInt("id"));
    Assert.assertEquals("Corby Page", friend2Obj.getString("name"));
    Assert.assertEquals(456, friend2Obj.getInt("id"));
}
else if ("Corby Page".equals(friend1Obj.getString("name"))) {
    Assert.assertEquals(456, friend1Obj.getInt("id"));
    Assert.assertEquals("Carter Page", friend2Obj.getString("name"));
    Assert.assertEquals(123, friend2Obj.getInt("id"));
}
else {
    Assert.fail("Expected either Carter or Corby, Got: " + friend1Obj.getString("name"));
}

Error Messages

We tried to make error messages easy to understand. This is really important, since it gets hard for the eye to pick out the difference, particularly in long JSON strings. For example:

String expected = "{id:1,name:\"Joe\",friends:[{id:2,name:\"Pat\",pets:[\"dog\"]},{id:3,name:\"Sue\",pets:[\"bird\",\"fish\"]}],pets:[]}";
String actual = "{id:1,name:\"Joe\",friends:[{id:2,name:\"Pat\",pets:[\"dog\"]},{id:3,name:\"Sue\",pets:[\"cat\",\"fish\"]}],pets:[]}"
JSONAssert.assertEquals(expected, actual, false);

… returns the following:

friends[id=3].pets[]: Expected bird, but not found ; friends[id=3].pets[]: Contains cat, but not expected

which tells you that the pets array under the friend where id=3 was supposed to contain “bird”, but had “cat” instead. (Maybe the cat ate the bird?)