Interconvert a ctypes.Structure to/from a binary string?

[Andrew Lentvorski]

Basically, I'd like to use the ctypes module as a much more descriptive
"struct" module.

Is there a way to take a ctypes.Structure-based class and convert it
to/from a binary string?

Thanks,
-a

 

[Uwe Schmitt]

Basically, I'd like to use the ctypes module as a much more descriptive
"struct" module.

Is there a way to take a ctypes.Structure-based class and convert it
to/from a binary string?

Thanks,
-a

My first idea was :

from ctypes import *
from pickle import *

class T(Structure): pass

print dumps(T())

which raises an TypeError, "abstract class".

And then I found

http://osdir.com/ml/python.ctypes/2006-03/msg00009.html

Greetings, Uwe

 

[Andrew P. Lentvorski, Jr.]

Basically, I'd like to use the ctypes module as a much more descriptive
"struct" module.

Is there a way to take a ctypes.Structure-based class and convert it
to/from a binary string?

Thanks,
-a

After chugging through the ctypes source code, I found that I can
abuse ctypes into doing what I want.

Here is how I did it. I can abuse
string_at(addressof(SomeCtypesClass), length) to get a binary string
out of ctypes while I use:

def analyze_elf_header(binaryData):
headerSize = ctypes.sizeof(Elf32_Ehdr)
header = Elf32_Ehdr()

# Abuse ctypes to initialize from a string
bb = ctypes.create_string_buffer(binaryData[0:headerSize])
ctypes.memmove(ctypes.addressof(header), ctypes.addressof(bb),
headerSize)

To jam stuff into a ctypes class. This seems like an oversight in the
module though. It would really be better if the class itself had
methods to init from/produce to a binary string.

However, I would prefer that somebody who actually knows ctypes to
weigh in here with comments about what I did.

Thanks,
-a