Recursive comparison
Walks nested objects and arrays with stable dot-and-index paths so structural drift stays easy to locate.
Day 020 / Python / Configuration
Config Diff
/ Overview
A dependency-free Python CLI that compares JSON configurations and reports changed paths without exposing their values.
Configuration drift can hide inside nested JSON, but printing complete before-and-after documents may expose tokens, passwords or other sensitive values.
/ Provided servicesClear thinking.
Clear thinking.
Practical delivery.
Privacy-conscious reporting
Reports paths, statuses and types while deliberately excluding the original and replacement values.
Automation-ready behavior
Provides readable and JSON output plus separate exit codes for matches, differences and invalid inputs.
/ Solution
Config Diff recursively compares two JSON files and reports only the affected paths, change categories and types. It supports ignored branches, deterministic text or JSON reports, and distinct exit codes without modifying either input.
/ Impact
Added, removed, changed and type-changed paths
Configuration values omitted from reports
Ignored paths and deterministic ordering
Nine passing standard-library tests
Python standard library
Argparse, pathlib, json, dataclasses and type hints provide the complete dependency-free CLI.
JSON path comparison
Recursive traversal classifies scalar, type, object-key and array-index differences in deterministic order.
Unittest
Nine tests cover nesting, arrays, ignores, privacy, ordering, output formats and CLI exit behavior.