The format library contains support for different file-formats for the Haxe programming language.

Formats

Currently supported formats are :

Format	Description	Reader	Writer
ABC	Flash AS3 bytecode format	☑	☑
AGAL	Adobe Shader Assembler for Stage3D	❌	☑
AMF	Flash serialized object	☑	☑
AS1	Adobe ActionScript1-2 bytecode in SWF	☑	❌
BMP	Bitmap Image format	☑	☑
ELF	Executable and Linkable Format	☑	❌
FLV	Flash Video	☑	☑
GIF	Image file format	☑	☑
GZ	Compressed file	☑	❌
HL	HashLink	☑	❌
JPG	Image file format	❌	☑
LZ4	Compressed file	☑	❌
MP3	Compressed audio	☑	☑
NEKO	NekoVM bytecode	☑	❌
PBJ	PixelBender Binary file	☑	☑
PDF	Only generic file structure and partial decryption	☑	❌
PEX	Particle effect format	☑	❌
PNG	Image file format	☑	☑
SWF	Flash file format	☑	☑
TAR	Compressed Archive	☑	☑
TGA	TARGA Image file format; Reader/Writer does not support developer data chunk; Writer does not support RLE encoding	☑	☑
TGZ	TAR+GZ Archive	☑	❌
WAV	Raw sound	☑	☑
ZIP	Compressed Archive	☑	☑

Documentation

Automatically generated API documentation is here: https://haxefoundation.github.io/format/format/

Installation

Available on haxelib, simply run the following command : haxelib install format. To use the library, simply add -lib format to your commandline parameters.

Package Structure

Each format lies in its own package, for example format.pdf contains classes for PDF.

The format.tools package contain some tools that might be shared by several formats but don't belong to a specific one.

Each format must provide the following files :

one Data.hx file that contain only data structures / enums used by the format. If there is really a lot, they can be separated into several files, but it's often my easy for the end user to only have to do one single import format.xxx.Data to access to all the defined types.
one Reader.hx class which enable to read the file format from an haxe.io.Input
one Writer.hx class which enable to write the file format to an haxe.io.Output
some other classes that might be necessary for manipulating the data structures

It's important in particular that the data structures storing the decoded information are separated from the actual classes manipulating it. This enable full access to all the file format infos and the ability to easily write libraries that manipulate the format, even if later the Reader implementation is changed for example.