elm-binary-decoder

Experimental binary decoder inspired by elm-tools/parser.

How to use?

You can write .wav file decoder like this. See examples. (All examples are far from real use :P)

wave : Decoder Wave
wave =
  succeed Wave
    |. symbol "RIFF"
    |= uint32BE
    |. symbol "WAVE"
    |= formatChunk
    |= dataChunk


formatChunk : Decoder Format
formatChunk =
  succeed identity
    |. symbol "fmt "
    |= (uint32BE |> andThen (\size ->
        succeed (Format size)
          |= uint16BE
          |= uint16BE
          |= uint32BE
          |= uint32BE
          |= uint16BE
          |= uint16BE
          |= if size > 16 then uint16BE else succeed 0
      ))

This example only decodes meta data because the cost of using immutable data should be expensive.

Bytes and Bits

You can use two decoders together.

This is an example from Mp3Decoder.

tagId3v2Header : Decoder TagId3v2Header
tagId3v2Header =
  succeed TagId3v2Header
    |. symbol "ID3"
    |= uint8
    |= uint8
    |= bits 1 tagId3v2HeaderFlags -- convert BitDecoder to Decoder
    |= syncSafeInt


tagId3v2HeaderFlags : BitDecoder TagId3v2HeaderFlags
tagId3v2HeaderFlags =
  succeed TagId3v2HeaderFlags
    |= Bit.bool
    |= Bit.bool
    |= Bit.bool
    |= Bit.bool

While "Byte" decoder decodes the whole binary data, "Bit" decoder only decodes an Int value.

What's special about this library?

Binary format often give you the size of data before you read it. So, there are many useful functions for using these meta information.

• Jump to certain position and read from there
• Read bytes until certain position

Status

This library won't be published because of some Native(Kernel) code. I don't know how binaries will be introduced into Elm in the future. I just wanted to share the idea!