Suitcase

Suitcase is a library providing a set of primitives and helpers for specifying and parsing protocols. Suitcase provides an internal DSL (Domain Specific Language) for describing protocol frames. It seeks to do for binary protocols what things like Django’s ORM and Sqlalchemy’s Declarative Syntax do for Database ORMs and adopts a similar, class-based syntax.

View the Full Documentation

The original version of suitcase was generously contributed by the Digi Wireless Design Services. The software is provided as Alpha software and has not undergone formal testing but does ship with extensive unit testing.

View the Changelog

Example

The following example shows how you would use Suitcase to describe some of the core network protocols that form the backbone of the internet:

from suitcase.fields import UBInt16, Payload, LengthField, Magic, \
    UBInt8Sequence, DispatchField, DispatchTarget, UBInt8, UBInt32, BitField, BitNum, \
    BitBool
from suitcase.structure import Structure


class TCPFrameHeader(Structure):
    source_address = UBInt16()
    destination_address = UBInt16()
    sequence_number = UBInt32()
    acknowledgement_number = UBInt32()
    options = BitField(16,
        data_offset=BitNum(4),
        reserved=BitNum(3),
        NS=BitBool(),
        CWR=BitBool(),
        ECE=BitBool(),
        URG=BitBool(),
        ACK=BitBool(),
        PSH=BitBool(),
        RST=BitBool(),
        SYN=BitBool(),
        FIN=BitBool()
    )
    window_size = UBInt16()
    checksum = UBInt16()
    urgent_pointer = UBInt16()
    # TODO: additional options if data_offset > 5


class UDPFrame(Structure):
    source_port = UBInt16()
    destination_port = UBInt16()
    length = LengthField(UBInt16())
    checksum = UBInt16()
    data = Payload(length)


class IPV4Frame(Structure):
    options = BitField(64,
        version=BitNum(4),
        internet_header_length=BitNum(4),
        differentiated_services_code_point=BitNum(6),
        explicit_congestion_notification=BitNum(2),
        total_length=BitNum(16),
        identification=BitNum(16),
        flags=BitNum(3),
        fragment_offset=BitNum(13),
    )
    time_to_live = UBInt8()
    protocol = DispatchField(UBInt8())
    header_checksum = UBInt16()
    source_ip_address = UBInt32()
    destination_ip_address = UBInt32()

From these declarative definitions, you can both create message instances and pack them or parse bytes (including stream parsing) to get objects that you can do with as you please.

For more information, including how to use the structures that you have described, please refer to the Full Documentation.

Design Goals

The library seeks to adhere to these core principles:

• Simple Interfaces

  Interfaces to the library should be simple and there should be a logical consistency in the library API. Internally, advanced language techniques are used, but the API consumer shouldn’t need to be aware of these details.

• Declarative Syntax

  Wherever appropriate, the library should seek to provide a syntax for specifying protocols that is as declarative as possible. These declarations should be explicit and it should be clear what is being declared.

• Informative Error Messages

  When implementing a protocol, you usually don’t get it right the first time. The library should use all available information to provide information to the API consumer that can help them figure out what is going wrong easily.

• Common Use Cases Should Be Easy

  There are certain data types/patterns that are common amongst protocols. The library should include code to help with these cases to make the programmer’s life easier.

• Less Common Use Cases Should Be Possible

  When there is a protocol that is significantly different than the norm, the library should still provide some useful code that can be reused. Some parts of the library might need to be abandoned, but the hope would be that one would not need to start from scratch.

License

This software is open-source software. Copyright Digi International, 2015.

This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this file, you can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.