PlageWatch is a plagiarism detection application designed and built using TypeScript, ReactJS and NodeJS.
PlageWatch can be used to detect similarity between two code bases written in JavaScript.
The application can detect plagiarism for both single and multiple files present in any given two folders.
PlageWatch can find the similarities between files which are deeply nested inside directories.
PlageWatch goes beyond textual difference and detect strategies to avoid detection such as renaming variables, extracting code into functions, moving code, changing comments, etc to find similarities between two submitted submissions.
PlageWatch interface includes visual diff of the code portions on code compare page where similarites between two files is highlighted in red color.
How PlageWatch can help to find similarities between two submissions?
The algorithm uses Abstract Syntax Trees (AST) to detect plagiarism in each Javascript file.
PlageWatch algorithm transforms each JavaScript file into an AST.
AST nodes generated from two different sumbissions are compared.
Once the comparison is done the similarity score is displayed. The score indicates the percentage of similarity of submission 1 with respect to submission 2.
On campare page, the similiarities found between the two submissions can be visualized.
Note: PlageWatch is robust and cannot be easily fooled by renaming the variables, changing the structure of code, adding comments or breaking code into multiple files.
How to use PlageWatch?
To use PlageWatch user has to upload two zip files containing JavaScript files. Note: Files which are not JavaScript are ignored.
After uploading the two zip files, The user has to click Check Plagiarism button to trigger the plagiarism check on uploaded files.
PlageWatch application generates the result which user can see in the form of percentage. The percentage indicates the percentage of similarity of submission 1 with respect to submission 2.
If there is any plagiarism found, user can click on Compare button to go to code compare page.
On code compare page user can see two code panels and the lines on which the similarity is detected by PlageWatch algorithm is highlighted in red. By clicking on next and prev buttons User can see all the files in two submissions where the similarity was found.