Jplag

JPlag - Detecting Software Plagiarism

Download and Installation

Downloading a release

Download a released version, the most recent is v2.12.1. All releases are single-JAR releases.

Building from sources

Note that v3.0.0 is still very much a work in progress, we thus recommend using a released version for now.

1. Download or clone the code from this repository.
2. Run mvn clean install from the root of the repository to install all submodules. You will find the JARs in the respective target directories.
3. Inside the jplag directory run mvn clean generate-sources package assembly:single.

You'll find the generated JAR with all dependencies in jplag/target.

(Breaking) Changes coming with the v3.0.0 release

Note: The following list is incomplete and gives a rough overview of the changes. In case you depend on missing features we refer to the legacy release v2.12.1 and the legacy branch.

• Java API to allow 3rd party integration (see Java API usage below).
• Result clustering is currently not supported (but might be restored).
• All comparisons are now sorted by average similarity. Maximum similarity is currently not supported (but might be restored).
• The CLI interface is now properly defined based on argparse4j. The CLI interface was slightly changed, a detailed description of all available options of the new CLI can be found below.
• The following comparison modes are no longer supported: experimental, external, special and revision.
• Renamed the Program class to JPlag. It contains the main logic, the parsed submissions, and delegates the comparison of files to one of the new ComparisonStrategy implementing classes.
• The new JPlagOptions class replaces all previous Options-related classes and manages all available program options.
• The new JPlagResult class bundles all results of a plagiarism detection run. An instance of this class can optionally be passed to the new Report class to generate web pages for the results
• The new JPlagComparison class replaces the old AllMatches class.
• We removed AvgComparator, AvgReversedComparator, MaxComparator, MaxReversedComparator, MinComparator, and MinReversedComparator from the JPlagComparison (previously AllMatches) class. The JPlagResult and JPlagComparison classes should make adding a custom sorting logic very straightforward if that's required.
• Removed deprecated web service: adminTool, atujplag, homepage, maven-libs, webService, and wsClient

Usage

JPlag can either be used via the CLI or directly via its Java API.

CLI

usage: jplag [-h]
             [-l {java_1_1,java_1_2,java_1_5,java_1_5_dm,java_1_7,java_1_9,python_3,c_cpp,c_sharp,char,text,scheme}]
             [-bc BC] [-v {parser,quiet,long,details}] [-d] [-S S] [-p P]
             [-x X] [-t T] [-m M] [-r R] rootDir

JPlag - Detecting Software Plagiarism

positional arguments:
  rootDir                The root-directory that contains all submissions

named arguments:
  -h, --help             show this help message and exit
  -l {java_1_1,java_1_2,java_1_5,java_1_5_dm,java_1_7,java_1_9,python_3,c_cpp,c_sharp,char,text,scheme}
                         Select  the  language  to  parse  the  submissions
                         (default: java_1_9)
  -bc BC                 Name of  the  directory  which  contains  the base
                         code (common framework)
  -v {parser,quiet,long,details}
                         Verbosity (default: quiet)
  -d                     (Debug) parser. Non-parsable files  will be stored
                         (default: false)
  -S S                   Look   in   directories   <root-dir>/*/<dir>   for
                         programs
  -p P                   comma-separated  list  of  all  filename  suffixes
                         that are included
  -x X                   All files named in <file> will be ignored
  -t T                   Tune the sensitivity of  the comparison. A smaller
                         <n> increases the sensitivity
  -m M                   Match similarity  Threshold  [0-100]:  All matches
                         above this threshold will be saved (Standard: 0.0)
  -n N                   Maximum number of matches that will be saved. If 
                         set to -1 all matches will be saved (Standard: 30)
  -r R                   Name of directory in which  the  web pages will be
                         stored (default: result)

Java API

The new API makes it easy to integrate JPlag's plagiarism detection into external Java projects.

Example

JPlagOptions options = new JPlagOptions("/path/to/rootDir", LanguageOption.JAVA_1_9);
options.setBaseCodeSubmissionName("template");

JPlag jplag = new JPlag(options);
JPlagResult result = jplag.run();

List<JPlagComparison> comparisons = result.getComparisons();

// Optional
File outputDir = new File("/path/to/output");
Report report = new Report(outputDir);

report.writeResult(result);

Class Diagram

Concepts

This section explains some fundamental concepts about JPlag that make it easier to understand and use.

Root directory

This is the directory in which JPlag will scan for submissions.

Submissions

Submissions contain the source code that JPlag will parse and compare. They have to be direct children of the root directory and can either be single files or directories.

Example: Single-file submissions

/path/to/root-directory
├── Submission-1.java
├── ...
└── Submission-n.java

Example: Directory submissions

JPlag will read submission directories recursively, so they can contain multiple (nested) source code files.

/path/to/root-directory
├── Submission-1
│   ├── Main.java
│   └── util
│       └── Utils.java
├── ...
└── Submission-n
    ├── Main.java
    └── util
        └── Utils.java

If you want JPlag to scan only one specific subdirectory of a submission for source code files (e.g. src), you can pass the --subDir option:

With option --subDir=src

/path/to/root-directory
├── Submission-1
│   ├── src                 
│   │   ├── Main.java       # Included
│   │   └── util            
│   │       └── Utils.java  # Included
│   ├── lib                 
│   │   └── Library.java    # Ignored
│   └── Other.java          # Ignored
└── ...

Base Code

The base code is a special kind of submission. It is the template that all other submissions are based on. JPlag will ignore any match between two submissions that is also part of the base code.

Like any other submission, the base code has to be a single file or directory in the root directory.

/path/to/root-directory
├── BaseCode
│   └── Solution.java
├── Submission-1
│   └── Solution.java
├── ...
└── Submission-n
    └── Solution.java

Example

In this example, students have to solve a given problem by implementing the run method in the template below. Because they are not supposed to modify the main function, it will be identical for each student.

// BaseCode/Solution.java
public class Solution {

    // DO NOT MODIFY
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Solution solution = new Solution();  
        solution.run();
    }
    
    public void run() {
        // TODO: Implement your solution here.
    }
}

To prevent JPlag from detecting similarities in the main function (and other parts of the template), we can instruct JPlag to ignore matches with the given base code by providing the --baseCode=<base-code-name> option.

The <base-code-name> in the example above is BaseCode.

Contributing

We're happy to incorporate all improvements to JPlag into this codebase. Feel free to fork the project and send pull requests.

Adding new languages

Adding a new language frontend is quite simple. Have a look at one of the jplag.frontend projects. All you need is a parser for the language (e.g., for ANTLR or for JavaCC) and a few lines of code that send the tokens (that are generated by the parser) to JPlag.