deconstruct

deconstruct provides a Pythonic analogue of C's struct, primarily for the purpose of interpreting (i.e. deconstructing) contiguous binary data.

Internally, deconstruct uses Python's struct module and can be considered an abstraction of sorts. struct (the module) can be frustrating to use: its format strings appear arcane and furthermore separate the description of the data from its representation, a definite strength of C's struct.

In contrast, deconstruct allows structs to be defined and used using a syntax that is Pythonic while maintaining close correspondence to C.

Usage

With deconstruct, the struct definition (adapted from input.h):

#include <stdint.h>

struct input_event {  
    uint64_t time[2];
    int16_t type;
    int16_t code;
    int32_t value;
};

can be represented as:

import deconstruct as c

class InputEvent(c.Struct):
    time: c.uint64[2]
    type: c.int16
    code: c.int16
    value: c.int32

This definition can be used to interpret and then access binary data:

>>> buffer = b'Some  arbitrary  buffer!'
>>> event = InputEvent(buffer)
>>> event.code
26229
>>> event.time
(8241904116577431379, 2340027244253309282)
>>> print(event)
struct InputEvent [ByteOrder.NATIVE, TypeWidth.STANDARD] {
    time: uint64 = (8241904116577431379, 2340027244253309282)
    type: int16 = 25120
    code: int16 = 26229
    value: int32 = 561145190
}

Of course, in reality the buffer passed in is more likely to come from something more useful, like a file. Notice that fixed-size, n-dimensional arrays can be specified using the syntax type[length], a further improvement on Python's struct.

Installation

deconstruct is now on PyPI:

pip install deconstruct

Alternatively you can install straight from this repository:

pip install https://github.com/biqqles/deconstruct/archive/master.zip

Built wheels are also available under Releases, as is a changelog. The latest release is version 0.5.

deconstruct has no dependencies but requires Python >= 3.6 as it makes use of the class annotation syntax added in that release (see PEP 526).

API listing

Struct(buffer: bytes)

Subclass this to define your own structs. Subclasses should only declare fields of C types defined in this package.

When you instantiate your Struct with a bytes-like object, deconstruct creates a format string and uses it to unpack that buffer. In the instance, C types will be replaced with their equivalent Python types for use (e.g. bytes for char, int for schar and float for double). All types available for use in struct field definitions and their details are documented in the table below.

Attributes

Note that TypeWidth.NATIVE can only be used with ByteOrder.NATIVE. This is a limitation of Python's struct.

Class methods

Class properties

Instance methods

You can also print Struct instances for easier debugging and compare them using the == operator.

C types

deconstruct defines the following special types for use in Struct definitions:²

Arrays

As mentioned earlier, all the types above support a type[length] syntax to define arrays. Multidimensional arrays work as you would expect, with int[2][2] declaring a 2-D array of type int and total length 4. When a Struct is used to unpack a buffer, each array will resolve to a tuple (or in the case of a multidimensional array, a nested tuple) of their equivalent Python types, as documented in the table above. The only exception to this is char, an array of which will be automatically concatenated to a single bytes object (if this behaviour is undesirable, use schar or uchar instead).

Pointers

ptr uniquely supports an optional notation format using the > operator, allowing you to denote the type it points to. This notation is purely for programmer convenience - it, for example, has no effect on the size of the struct as all pointers are assumed to be of the size of void* (which is guaranteed to be able to hold any pointer).

To illustrate this syntax, f: c.ptr > c.double denotes a pointer to double (double* f;). Arrays of pointers and pointers to arrays are supported. For example, c.ptr[2] > c.int indicates an array of int*, while c.ptr > c.int[2] indicates a pointer to an int array.

You can also use Struct subtypes as the pointed-to type.

1. Python's struct has the concept of "standard" type sizes. This is somewhat confusing coming from C as its standards go to some length not to define a standard ABI. However, as this terminology is so fundamental to the documentation of Python's struct it is replicated here for simplicity's sake. These sizes correspond with the minimum sizes implied for C's types.

2. Because some of these conflict with Python's primitives, it is not recommended to import * from deconstruct as this will severely pollute your namespace (in fact this is a bad idea in general). I like to import deconstruct as c as shown above.