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Introduction

packedobjects is a data encoding tool based on the telecommunications standard Packed Encoding Rules (PER). An abstract syntax language is used to define a protocol specification. packedobjects uses the Scheme programming language to represent the protocol specification within a symbolic expression (s-expression).

For a more detailed introduction refer to the following short paper.

packedobjects is suitable for simple cross platform request/response protocols that require efficient encoding. So far packedobjects has been tested on the following platforms:

Author

John P. T. Moore

Version

0.62

Usage

(packedobjects <protocol> #!key <pdusize> <strsize>)

Creates a packedobject using the supplied protocol specification. Optional values for the PDU and string buffer sizes can be specified. They default to 5000 and 1000 respectively. Both the PDU buffer and string buffer are fixed in size. The string buffer must be large enough to handle any string used by the protocol. The PDU buffer must be manually freed.

(<packedobject> 'pack <values>)

Encodes a list of values and returns the number of bytes used.

(<packedobject> 'unpack)

Returns a list of values.

(<packedobject> 'read <fd> <size>)

Reads a number of bytes from a file descriptor into the PDU buffer.

(<packedobject> 'write <fd> <size>)

Writes a number of bytes from the PDU buffer to a file descriptor.

(<packedobject> 'dump-buffer <filename> <size>)

Dumps a number of bytes from the PDU buffer to a file.

(<packedobject> 'free)

Frees the PDU buffer.

Data types with examples

The following data types are currently supported.

  1. string
protocol
(foobar string (size 1 10))
values
(foobar "foobar")
description
7 bit string limited to 10 characters in length.

Examples

(require-extension packedobjects)
 
(define bbcard
  '(bbcard sequence
           (name string (size 1 60))
           (team string (size 1 60))
           (age integer (range 1 100))
           (position string (size 1 60))
           (handedness enumerated (left-handed right-handed ambidextrous))
           (batting-average sequence
                            (mantissa integer ())
                            (base enumerated (2 10))
                            (exponent integer ()))))
 
(define bbcard-values
  '(bbcard
    (name "Casey")
    (team "Mudville Nine")
    (age 32)
    (position "left field")
    (handedness ambidextrous)
    (batting-average
     (mantissa 250)
     (base 10)
     (exponent -3))))
 
(define po (packedobjects bbcard))
(print* "encoded in " (po 'pack bbcard-values) " bytes.\n")
(print (po 'unpack))
(po 'free)