pystructs 0.4.0

c-like struct implementation for human

pystructs

pystructs is a Django-like declarative binary parsing library for Python. Define binary data structures as classes and parse/serialize them with ease.

Features

• Declarative syntax - Define structs like Django models
• Bidirectional - Parse binary data and serialize back to bytes
• Rich field types - Integers, floats, bytes, strings, arrays, and more
• Bit-level parsing - BitStruct for parsing individual bits
• Conditional fields - Fields that exist based on runtime conditions
• Validation system - Built-in and custom validators
• Zero runtime dependencies - Pure Python implementation

Installation

pip install pystructs
uv add pystructs

Quick Start

from pystructs import Struct, UInt8, UInt16, UInt32, Bytes, Ref, SyncRule

class Packet(Struct):
    class Meta:
        endian = "big"
        sync_rules = [
            SyncRule("length", from_field="payload", compute=len),
        ]

    magic = UInt32(default=0xDEADBEEF)
    version = UInt8(default=1)
    length = UInt16()
    payload = Bytes(size=Ref("length"))

# Parse from bytes
data = b"\xde\xad\xbe\xef\x01\x00\x05Hello"
packet = Packet.parse(data)
print(packet.magic)    # 3735928559 (0xDEADBEEF)
print(packet.version)  # 1
print(packet.payload)  # b'Hello'

# Create and serialize
new_packet = Packet(payload=b"World")
new_packet.sync()  # Auto-calculate length
print(new_packet.to_bytes())

More Examples

Variable-Length Arrays

from pystructs import Struct, UInt8, UInt16, Array, Ref, SyncRule

class ScoreBoard(Struct):
    class Meta:
        sync_rules = [
            SyncRule("count", from_field="scores", compute=len),
        ]

    player_id = UInt16()
    count = UInt8()
    scores = Array(UInt16(), count=Ref("count"))

board = ScoreBoard(player_id=1234, scores=[100, 250, 180])
board.sync()
print(board.to_bytes())  # Serializes with count=3

Bit-Level Parsing

from pystructs import Struct, UInt16, BitStruct, Bit, Bits, EmbeddedBitStruct

class TCPFlags(BitStruct):
    class Meta:
        size = 1

    fin = Bit()
    syn = Bit()
    rst = Bit()
    psh = Bit()
    ack = Bit()
    urg = Bit()
    reserved = Bits(2)

class TCPHeader(Struct):
    class Meta:
        endian = "big"

    src_port = UInt16()
    dst_port = UInt16()
    flags = EmbeddedBitStruct(TCPFlags)

header = TCPHeader.parse(b"\x00\x50\x1f\x90\x12")
print(header.src_port)     # 80
print(header.flags.syn)    # True

Conditional Fields

from pystructs import Struct, UInt8, UInt32, Conditional, Ref

class VersionedPacket(Struct):
    version = UInt8()
    # Only present in version 2+
    extended_header = Conditional(
        UInt32(),
        when=Ref("version") >= 2,
    )
    data = UInt8()

# Version 1: no extended header
v1 = VersionedPacket.parse(b"\x01\x42")
print(v1.extended_header)  # None

# Version 2: with extended header
v2 = VersionedPacket.parse(b"\x02\x00\x00\x00\x01\x42")
print(v2.extended_header)  # 1

Tagged Unions (Switch)

from pystructs import Struct, UInt8, UInt16, UInt32, Switch, Ref

class TextPayload(Struct):
    length = UInt8()
    # text would use Bytes(size=Ref("length"))

class BinaryPayload(Struct):
    size = UInt16()
    # data would use Bytes(size=Ref("size"))

class Message(Struct):
    msg_type = UInt8()
    payload = Switch(
        discriminator=Ref("msg_type"),
        cases={
            1: TextPayload,
            2: BinaryPayload,
        },
    )

Field Types

Category	Fields
Integers	Int8, UInt8, Int16, UInt16, Int32, UInt32, Int64, UInt64
Floats	Float32, Float64
Bytes	FixedBytes, Bytes
Strings	FixedString, String, NullTerminatedString
Composite	Array, EmbeddedStruct, Conditional, Switch
Special	Bool, Padding, Flags, Enum
Bit-level	BitStruct, Bit, Bits, EmbeddedBitStruct

Documentation

Full documentation is available at Read the Docs.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and contribution guidelines.

License

MIT License