radareorg/radare2

Structured document helpers

Open

#3222 opened on Sep 2, 2015

View on GitHub
 (5 comments) (0 reactions) (0 assignees)C (23,826 stars) (3,229 forks)batch import
RBinXMLgood first issuehigh-priorityjsonr2rtest-required

Description

R2 already have a json tokenizer, writing an xml one should be simple, and we can also use a C one using shlr/tcc or ALT to parse the structured code and define flags for every opened bracked etc. This can be useful to find and analyze binary stuff inside structured text documents like XML or JSON.

  • Add RBin plugin to load XML/JSON "symbols"
  • Add commands for text files
    • Seek to source line Nth
    • Seek to column Nth
    • Seek to token Nth
    • Seek to the end of the current scope (like % in vim ?)
    • Enumerate all start/end tokens

This way we can also replace ed.

This stuff can be implemented in RBin as a plugin that detects XML and JSON documents by checking the first bytes of the file.

Contributor guide

Tech stack
c
Domain
toolingdeveloper experience
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
3-5 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
Understanding of radare2 internalsKnowledge of C programmingFamiliarity with RBin plugin architecture
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
40
Research direction
Start by examining the existing JSON tokenizer in radare2 (likely in libr/core or libr/parse). Look for patterns used to tokenize JSON and parse structured data. Then design an XML tokenizer following similar patterns. Consider using shlr/tcc or ALT for C tokenization. Implement an RBin plugin that detects XML/JSON by first bytes and provides symbols. Add commands for seeking to lines, columns, tokens, and scope ends. Also address the linked bugs and CSV support request. The work involves multiple files: the RBin plugin source, tokenizer implementation, and command handlers.