Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Wireshark dissector xml

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Nov 12, 2008, at 12:44 PM, rajith pr wrote:

> Iam new to writing dissectors. While study one of the dissector code  
> i found it reads a dictionary.xml file. Can somebody throw some  
> light on to the usage of xml in dissecting.

XML isn't used generically in dissecting.  The Diameter (RFC 3588)  
protocol has a message format with a simple fixed-length header  
followed by a list of attribute-value pairs; the set of attributes is  
extensible.  The Wireshark Diameter dissector has a dictionary that  
contains descriptions of Diameter attributes; that dictionary happens  
to be an XML file.

The RADIUS (RFC 2865) protocol is similar to Diameter, in that its  
messages have a simple fixed-length header followed by a list of  
attribute-value pairs, and the Wireshark RADIUS dissector has a  
dictionary, but the dictionary is not an XML file (it's in the same  
format as the FreeRADIUS dictionary, so that the FreeRADIUS dictionary  
files can be used).