Package description

This package aims to provide a fast, language-agnostic a2l file parser.

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Implementation

The parser/lexer code is generated using ANTLR4. Once the AST has been generated, the package generates a nested structure tree using gRPC messages. The idea behind this is to provide the AST to any client written in any language with a well documented, supported and structured message structure.

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Example

Let say you must parse the following A2L content using Python:

ASAP2_VERSION 1 51
/begin PROJECT my_project_name "my_project_long_id"
/end PROJECT

Getting the pre-built artefacts

The fist thing to do is to retrieve the pre-built artefacts from the releases page. To do so, follow this link and download the file named a2l_grpc.tar.gz. This archive contains the following files/directories:

a2l_grpc.tar.gz
├── protobuf
|   ├── A2L.proto
|   ├── A2ML.proto
|   ├── API.proto
|   ├── IF_DATA.proto
|   ├── shared.proto
├── a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).h
├── a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).dll
├── a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).dylib
└── a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).so

The a2l_grpc.tar.gz/protobuf folder contains all the gRPC data structure definitions. It will be used to generate the structures definitions, as well as their serialization/deserialization method for the desired language (Python in this case).

The a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).h contains the API definition of the corresponding Dynamic Link Library/Shared Object.

Finally, the a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).dll/so serves this API.

Integrating the pre-built artefacts

Now that we have the artefacts, we need to integrate them into the Python project. Simply extract the archive and place it into the project to have the following files/directories structure:

src
├── a2l_grpc
|   ├── protobuf
|   |   ├── A2L.proto
|   |   ├── A2ML.proto
|   |   ├── API.proto
|   |   ├── IF_DATA.proto
|   |   ├── shared.proto
|   ├── a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).h
|   ├── a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).dll
|   ├── a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).dylib
|   └── a2l_grpc_(os)_(arch).so
├── main.py

Generating the gRPC sources

The next step is to generate the gRPC source for our language, in this case Python. To do that, we first need to install the code generator for Python with the command python -m pip install grpcio-tools

Then, we generate the sources with the following command (running from the src directory):

python -m grpc_tools.protoc -I./a2l_grpc --python_out=. --pyi_out=. --grpc_python_out=. ./a2l_grpc/protobuf/*.proto

This command will create a protobuf directory in the src folder, containing all the Python sources.

Writing the gRPC client

Now that all sources are available, we can start writing the gRPC client in Python. Here is the code:

import ctypes
import os
import sys

from pya2l.protobuf.API_pb2 import *
from pya2l.protobuf.API_pb2_grpc import *


def get_shared_object_name() -> str:
    if os.name == 'nt':
        shared_object = 'a2l_grpc_windows_amd64.dll'
    elif os.name == 'posix':
        if sys.platform == 'darwin':
            shared_object = 'a2l_grpc_darwin_arm64.dylib'
        else:
            shared_object = 'a2l_grpc_linux_amd64.so'
    else:
        raise Exception(f'unsupported operating system {os.name}')
    return shared_object


class A2lParser(object):
    def __init__(self, string):
        self._dll = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'a2l_grpc', get_shared_object_name()))
        channel = grpc.insecure_channel('localhost:3333')
        client = A2LStub(channel)
        if self._dll.Create(3333):
            raise Exception(1)
        self.ast = client.GetTreeFromA2L(TreeFromA2LRequest(a2l=string.encode())).tree


if __name__ == '__main__':
    a2l_string = """ASAP2_VERSION 1 51
/begin PROJECT my_project_name "my_project_long_id"
/end PROJECT"""

    p = A2lParser(a2l_string)
    print(f'ASAP2 version number = {p.ast.ASAP2_VERSION.VersionNo.Value}')
    print(f'ASAP2 upgrade number = {p.ast.ASAP2_VERSION.UpgradeNo.Value}')
    print(p.ast)

Running this code will produce the following output:

ASAP2 version number = 1
ASAP2 upgrade number = 51
ASAP2_VERSION {
  VersionNo {
    Value: 1
    Base: 10
    Size: 1
  }
  UpgradeNo {
    Value: 51
    Base: 10
    Size: 2
  }
}
PROJECT {
  Name {
    Value: "my_project_name"
  }
  LongIdentifier {
    Value: "my_project_long_id"
  }
}

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Hints

• As A2L files are often quite large, it might happen that gRPC raise an error because the message size is too large. In order to fix that, it is possible to set grpc.max_receive_message_length and grpc.max_send_message_length options while instantiating the gRPC channel.
• As shown in the above example, the numerical values are held in the Value field. The other fields are holding meta- data in case the value must be dumped. In the case of the UpgradeNo for instance, the Base field says that the original value was defined in numerical base 10, and the Size field says that it has 2 digits.