Re: Small patch to add "add port" output from -v -v -v to XML format

[Max Schubert <nmap () webwizarddesign com>]

Fyodor,

On Fri, 08 Nov 2002 13:52:53 PST, Fyodor wrote:
> I agree that parsing Nmap XML output is the way to go.  I believe that
> approach is even better than the SO/DLL suggestion on your web page.

> From an ease of nmap maintenance and use, it certainly is the better way
to go ... I was just thinking in terms of 
1) Performance.
2) Embedding nmap.

It would be excellent to be able to embed nmap in a network monitoring 
tool ... a C program, etc .. without having to read from a pipe .. and 
for glue modules it would be very nice to call a library function and 
get back a list of hosts as C structs that contains a list of C structs 
for ports etc .. or C++ object instances.  I am curious about why you
prefer the XML route?  

As far as reading from a pipe goes, reading XML is definitely much easier
than any other textual input as it has well-defined structure and there
are many APIs for reading/parsing it .. and maintenance-wise it is easier
for both parties as long as the DTD stays stable.

> I have applied your patch for the next version of Nmap, which I hope
> to release in the next few days.  Your patch is reversed, but that
> doesn't really matter.  

Sorry about that .. that was the first source-level patch I have ever done.

> For consistancy with other Nmap XML elements,
> I changed the tag name to 'addport' and the 'number' parameter to
> 'portid'.  I also removed the 'msg' parameter.  I updated the
> docs/nmap.dtd to recognize this new tag.

Sounds good ... I apologize for not reading the code a bit more and
making it consistent with the rest of the XML messages/DTD.

> Please let us (nmap-dev or nmap-hackers) know once your parser is
> working with XML output.  It would be nice to see more code examples
> of Nmap XML parsing.

Will do .. once the XML backend is in place, my module set will be much
more usable .. about 800 people downloaded version .02 but I suspect few
had much luck due to the fragility of my LOG_STDOUT parsing code.

Max

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