How to return some text when both strings are identicals?

[sdlins]

Hi,

First of all, thank you for your efforts to make/continue this extension. But I have a question: I found RendererInterface::getResultForIdenticals() but in SideBySide implementation it returns a '' empty string, SideBySide is a final class so that I can't extend it, so, how could I set a string to show for equal situations?

[jfcherng]

Those finals are added to reduce unnecessary possible BC breaks if someone (such as me) changes class implementations or even simply renames a method.

Maybe you can just use a function to wrap it?

function renderDiffer(RendererInterface $renderer, Differ $differ): string
{
    $diff = $renderer->render($differ);

    if (\is_a($renderer, SideBySide::class) && $diff === '') {
        $diff = 'There is no difference.';
    }

    return $diff;
}

Or copy the SideBySide implementation to another class and modify it to what you want. (namely, create your own renderer)

[sdlins]

@jfcherng thank you. I had not thought about a function. I had only thought to "duplicate" SideBySide implementation just to change that method but, both function and duplication it seems very cumbersome (dont get me wrong) since we already have the method but returning nothing.

I propose to implement the string to be returned as a configurable option.

[jfcherng]

Added. Could you test it with the renderer option resultForIdenticals with the current v6 branch to see if I miss/misunderstand something?

// the renderer class options
$rendererOptions = [
    // change this value to a string as the returned diff if the two input strings are identical
    'resultForIdenticals' => null,
];

[sdlins]

Nice... Worked fine! Thank you.

[jfcherng]

6.2.0 has been released now. :)