
Security News
The Next Open Source Security Race: Triage at Machine Speed
Claude Opus 4.6 has uncovered more than 500 open source vulnerabilities, raising new considerations for disclosure, triage, and patching at scale.
snapshot-diff
Advanced tools
Diffing snapshot utility for Jest. Takes two values, and return their difference as a string, ready to be snapshotted with toMatchSnapshot().
Especially helpful when testing the difference between different React component states.
yarn add --dev snapshot-diff
const snapshotDiff = require('snapshot-diff');
test('snapshot difference between 2 strings', () => {
expect(snapshotDiff(a, b)).toMatchSnapshot();
});
const React = require('react');
const Component = require('./Component');
test('snapshot difference between 2 React components state', () => {
expect(
snapshotDiff(<Component test="say" />, <Component test="my name" />)
).toMatchSnapshot();
});
const { toMatchDiffSnapshot } = require('snapshot-diff');
expect.extend({ toMatchDiffSnapshot });
test('snapshot difference between 2 strings', () => {
expect(a).toMatchDiffSnapshot(b);
});
const React = require('react');
const Component = require('./Component');
test('snapshot difference between 2 React components state', () => {
expect(<Component test="say" />).toMatchDiffSnapshot(
<Component test="my name" />
);
});
... alternatively import it once, for instance in your tests setup file:
require('snapshot-diff/extend-expect');
Produced snapshot:
exports[`snapshot difference between 2 strings 1`] = `
"- First value
+ Second value
- abcx
+ abcy
"
`;
exports[`snapshot difference between 2 React components state 1`] = `
"- <Component test=\\"say\\" />
+ <Component test=\\"my name\\" />
@@ -27,11 +27,11 @@
<span />
<span />
<span />
<span />
<span>
- say
+ my name
</span>
<span />
<span />
<span />
<span />"
`;
By default, snapshot-diff uses a built in React serializer based on react-test-renderer. The
serializers used can be set by calling
setSerializers with an array of serializers to use. The order of serializers in this array may be important to you as
serializers are tested in order until a match is found.
setSerializers can be used to add new serializers for unsupported data types, or to set a different serializer
for React components. If you want to keep the default React serializer in place, don't forget to add the default
serializers to your list of serializers!
const snapshotDiff = require('snapshot-diff');
const myCustomSerializer = require('./my-custom-serializer');
snapshotDiff.setSerializers([
...snapshotDiff.defaultSerializers, // use default React serializer - add this if you want to serialise React components!
myCustomSerializer
]);
You can replace the default React serializer by omitting it from the serializer list. The following uses enzymes to-json serializer instead:
const snapshotDiff = require('snapshot-diff');
const enzymeToJson = require('enzyme-to-json/serializer');
const myCustomSerializer = require('./my-custom-serializer');
snapshotDiff.setSerializers([
enzymeToJson, // using enzymes serializer instead
myCustomSerializer
]);
By default Jest adds extra quotes around strings so it makes diff snapshots of objects too noisy.
To fix this – snapshot-diff comes with custom serializer, which you can add directly in your tests or in setupFiles script:
const snapshotDiff = require('snapshot-diff');
expect.addSnapshotSerializer(snapshotDiff.getSnapshotDiffSerializer());
test('snapshot difference between 2 objects', () => {
expect(snapshotDiff({ foo: 'bar' }, { foo: 'baz' })).toMatchSnapshot();
});
...or add it globally to your jest config:
// jest.config.js
module.exports = {
snapshotSerializers: [
require.resolve('snapshot-diff/serializer.js'),
],
};
type Options = {
expand?: boolean,
colors?: boolean,
contextLines?: number
};
// default export
snapshotDiff(valueA: any, valueB: any, options?: Options) => string
// custom matcher
expect(valueA: any).toMatchDiffSnapshot(valueB: any, options?: Options, testName?: string) => void
expand: boolean (default: false) – expand the diff, so the whole information is preservedcolors: boolean (default: false) – preserve color information from Jest diffcontextLines: number (default: 5) - number of context lines to be shown at the beginning and at the end of a snapshotstablePatchmarks: boolean (default: false) - prevent line number patch marks from appearing in
diffs. This can be helpful when diffs are breaking only because of the patch marks. Changes @@ -1,1 +1,2 @@ to @@ --- --- @@.aAnnotation: string (default: 'First Value') - the annotation indicating from which serialization the - lines arebAnnotation: string (default: 'Second Value') - the annotation indicating from which serialization the + lines areProject is MIT-licensed. Pull Requests welcome!
FAQs
Diffing Jest snapshots utility
The npm package snapshot-diff receives a total of 72,226 weekly downloads. As such, snapshot-diff popularity was classified as popular.
We found that snapshot-diff demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 2 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
Did you know?

Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.

Security News
Claude Opus 4.6 has uncovered more than 500 open source vulnerabilities, raising new considerations for disclosure, triage, and patching at scale.

Research
/Security News
Malicious dYdX client packages were published to npm and PyPI after a maintainer compromise, enabling wallet credential theft and remote code execution.

Security News
gem.coop is testing registry-level dependency cooldowns to limit exposure during the brief window when malicious gems are most likely to spread.