dissolve-chunks's Introduction

Dissolve-chunks

A declarative parser generator based on dissolve.

Documentation

Please visit the Wiki.

Overview

With dissolve-chunks (DChunks), you can make a parser by defining the parsing rules for each chunk of the binaries. This means that you need not to write your parsing codes from the beginning to the end of the binaries. You can separate the targeting data into smaller chunks, and then define the parsing rules for each of them. After all rules are ready, you can call the chainable method join() to sequentially connect all your rules . Finally, just call compile() to get your parser.

Here is an pseudo example:

var chunk1_rules = [ rule1, rule2, rule3 ],
    chunk2_rules = [ rule4, squash([ rule5_1, rule5_2 ]) ],
    chunk3_rule = squash([ rule6, rule7 ]),
    chunk4_rule = rule8,
    chunk5_rule = squash('key_name', [ rule9, rule10 ]);

var parser = DChunks().join(chunk1_rules).join(chunk2_rules)
                     .join(chunk3_rule).join(chunk4_rule)
                     .join(chunk5_rule).compile();

parser.on('parsed', function (result) {
    console.log(result);
});

Features

Making your parser in a declarative way.
More manageable by cutting the targeting data into smaller chunks and defining the rules for each of them.
You can squash some rules into a single rule by using squash([name,] rules). If name is specified while squashing, the DChunks will automatically put the parsed result under that namespace. It's handy.
Making a parser is mostly just about declaring rules. Integrating and compiling the parsing rules is easy.