CENCODE

This is a c library which encodes C string into various formats, however till now, only UTF-8 encoding-decoding has been implemented.

Version

Current version is 0.0.4 ALPHA.

Platforms

It is a cross platform C11 library which has been built and run successfully in Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux. Please raise concern in case of any issues.

Installation

You can clone the repository and simply use make to build the library.

git clone https://github.com/antaripchatterjee/CEncode.git
cd CEncode
make

The above commands will only build the debug version of the library, and it will also build an executable to test it's functionalities.

Use the below command to test them.

./test_utf8

Incase of any failed test case, please raise a concern.

If everything is fine, just execute the below command to build the stable static libraries.

make install

Use below command to clear all the builds and objects.

make clear

API Usage

To encode your string into UTF-8 format, add the library and header files into your project and then you must include utf8.h header in your source code. It contains minimal number of C functions which let us encode the string data.

#include <utf8.h>
...

Type definitions

utf_method

The below enum are some methods which are used to identify the encoding or decoing operation.

enum __utf_method {
    UNKNOWN,                            // Unknown method
    ENC_UTF_8,                          // Encoded to UTF-8 text
    DEC_UTF_8                           // Decoded from UTF-8 text
};

typedef enum __utf_method utf_method;   // Type definition of __utf_method

utf_t

The C structure utf_t is used as the return type of the function utf8_encode and utf8_decode function.

struct __utf_t {
    wchar_t *w_str;                     // Holds the actual encoded or decoded text
    size_t w_size;                      // Can be used to get the lenght of the property w_str
    utf_method (*method)();             // Can be used to check if the property w_str is UTF-8 encoded or decoded string.
};

typedef struct __utf_t utf_t;           // Type definition for __utf_t

Functions

utf8_encode

C function utf8_encode can be used to encode a text into UTF-8 format. The function signature is as below.

extern utf_t* utf8_encode(const wchar_t*, size_t);

It takes two arguments, the first argument is the pointer of wchar_t and the second argument is the size of the input string, but if we keep it as 0, then the function will recalculate the size of the input string.

utf8_decode

C function utf8_decode can be used to decode an encoded text into UTF-8 format. The function signature is as below.

extern utf_t* utf8_decode(const wchar_t*, size_t);

It also takes two arguments, the first argument is the pointer of wchar_t which indeed an encoded text, and the second argument is the size of the encoded string, but if we keep it as 0, then the function will recalculate the size of the encoded string.

copy_as_ustring

This C function is used to convert a pointer of wchar_t to the pointer of unsigned char.

extern int copy_as_ustring(const wchar_t*, unsigned char*, size_t);

copy_as_wstring

This C function does a opposite job that the C function copy_as_u_string.

extern int copy_as_wstring(const unsigned char*, wchar_t*, size_t);

P.S: For both of the above functions, always add +1 to the length of the input string and pass it as a third argument.

stringify_utf_method

This function stringify the encoding or decoding method.

extern const char* stringify_utf_method(utf_method);

As of now, the methods can be one of the below.

"UNKNOW"
"ENC_UTF_8"
"DEC_UTF_8"

utf_free

This C function free the allocated memory of a valid pointer of utf_t. Signature is given below.

extern void utf_free(utf_t*);

Macros

ucslen

This C macro takes a valid pointer of unsigned char to calculate it's length.

#define ucslen(__ucs) strlen((const char*) __ucs)

License

This C library comes with MIT License.

Development

Some major and minor changes will be applied in the future versions, however this library can be used safely.