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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Best way to give configuration information to a protocol

From: Pascal Quantin <pascal.quantin@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2017 21:03:07 +0200
Hi Juan Jose,

2017-09-18 17:12 GMT+02:00 Juan Jose Martin Carrascosa <juanjo@xxxxxxx>:
Hi all,

Which is the best way to pass configuration to a protocol? Do we have any builtin mechanisms? I tried to upload a patch using CSV at some point but it didn't succeed. So I wonder if there is any recommended way I can implement: table or list in the Preferences, XML file, CSV file...

My goal is to pass ("GUID", "plugin_name") pairs to the RTPS protocol so Wireshark knows dynamically what plugin it should call to deserialize data that is written by the DataWriter with id = "GUID". The GUID is part of the DATA packet and it is already dissected and known at that point.

A UAT dialog could be appropriate for your needs. Several dissectors are already using it and can be taken as an example (packet-ipsec.c, packet-http.c, ...).
Or if the GUID / plugin mapping never changes, you could create a dissector table and have your plugin register to this table (see register_dissector_table() / register_custom_dissector_table() and the corresponding dissector_add_XXX() functions).

Best regards,
Pascal.