Pak: A General Purpose Packet Marshaling Library#

Pak is a simple, yet powerful and extendable Python library for translating between raw data and usable, meaningful values.

An example of simple usage:

import pak

raw_data = (
    # Represents the value '0'.
    b"\x00" +

    # A string encoded in 4 bytes, with characters "abcd".
    b"\x04" + b"abcd" +

    # Two contiguous 16-bit, little endian numbers, '1' and '2'.
    b"\x01\x00" + b"\x02\x00"
)

class MyPacket(pak.Packet):
    byte:   pak.Int8
    string: pak.PrefixedString(pak.UInt8)
    array:  pak.UInt16[2]

# Unpack a packet from the raw data.
packet = MyPacket.unpack(raw_data)

# Each field will have the appropriate value unpacked from the raw data.
assert packet == MyPacket(
    byte   = 0,
    string = "abcd",
    array  = [1, 2],
)

# Pack the packet into raw data.
packet_data = packet.pack()

# The packed data will be the same as the initial raw data.
assert packet_data == raw_data

Features#

  • A declarative, simple API for defining packet structures.

  • Highly generic, able to fit any packet protocol with relative ease.

  • The ability to define your own means of marshaling between raw data and usable values.

  • A composable API to allow you to easily leverage pre-existing code and reduce code duplication.

  • A healthy set of provided features with general application, such as marshaling numeric, string, and enum values.

  • Numerous high quality tests to make sure your code works as expected.

  • Well-documented to help you know what APIs exist and how to use them.

  • And more!

Table of Contents#

Indices and Tables#