/ips-protodesc-code

Code for parsing out augmented packet header diagrams from IETF documents

Primary LanguagePythonOtherNOASSERTION

The Network Protocol Tool (npt)

Overview

The source code contained in the npt directory is broadly split into three categories:

  • input parsers (parser_*.py), that take a protocol described in a given format, and generate the intermediate representation;

  • helper classes (rfc.py, protocol.py, util.py, and helpers.py), that are used to construct and inspect the intermediate representation; and

  • output formatters (formatter_*.py), that take the intermediate representation, and produce output in a given format.

Additionally, there is a directory of examples (/examples), containing a number of protocol definitions in each of the input parsers, and a helper script that performs the end-to-end process of taking a protocol description, and generating output in a specified format.

Getting started

The project uses Pipenv for dependency management. To begin, run:

pipenv install --dev -e .

to create a Python virtual environment with appropriate packages installed, and the npt tool installed in editable mode ready for development. Then, run:

pipenv shell

to start the virtual environment, within which you can run the scripts.

To run the project's test suite, run:

pipenv run tests

Generating a protocol description

npt can be executed as follows:

python npt -d <output-dir> -of <output-format> <document>

where:

  • is the name of the document to be processed. This is either a local filename, an RFC name, or an internet-draft name.

  • -d output_dir, --dir output_dir is the directory in which to place results

  • -f formats, --outformat formats : List of outputs to generate from parsing the draft/rfc specification. formats is a comma separated string. In generating the output, the script performs a depth-first search of the intermediate representation, to determine the order in which the necessary functions of the specified formatter are called.

    Currently supported output formats are :

    • simple : a textual representation of the parsed IETF specification

    • rust : a rust protocol parser.

                    formats are simple,rust


*Example Usage*

python npt -d foo -f simple examples/draft-mcquistin-quic-augmented-diagrams-03.xml python npt -d foo -f simple examples/draft-mcquistin-augmented-ascii-diagrams-07.xml python npt -d foo -f rust examples/draft-mcquistin-augmented-udp-example-00.xml python npt -d foo -f rust examples/draft-mcquistin-augmented-tcp-example-00.xml


## Acknowledgements

This work is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council, under grant EP/R04144X/1. See [more information about the project](https://github.com/glasgow-ipl/ips-protodesc-code/blob/master/FUNDING.md).