Python generically parse data into object structure

Question

What I want to know is if I have a defined structured object with known parameters and a known order. I want to parse a binary blob into this structure in a generic way.

For example, I know that my file is a binary file of this structure

typedef struct { 
 uint frCompressedSize;
 uint frUncompressedSize;
 ushort frFileNameLength;
 ushort frExtraFieldLength;
 char frFileName[ frFileNameLength ];
 uchar frExtraField[ frExtraFieldLength ];
 uchar frData[ frCompressedSize ];
 } ZIPFILERECORD;

Is there a better way to do this than reading in individual fields at a time in a hard coded manner? In my real code the structure has almost 100 parameters so the hardcoded method is not my first choice.

Any Ideas?

thanks!

Answer 1

You are looking for the python struct library

• Without Me It Just Aweso: This got me half way there, I had to break up the structure into two parts, since the last 3 parameter sizes relied on the values read in on the top paremters. Dividing it up into several struct.unpack calls solved my problem in much less than the hardcoded parsing I thougth I was going to have to do. thanks!