Implementing Register

Network Monitor loads a capture from the capture file, and then starts calling the Register function for all the protocols that it can identify. Each parser DLL must implement a Register function for each protocol that the parser DLL supports.

Each implementation of the Register function must call the CreatePropertyDatabase and AddProperty functions to create and fill-in the property database for the protocol, and then the CreateHandoffTable to create the handoff table for the protocol — if needed.

Note  Protocol properties are defined for Network Monitor. Properties are not mapped to a location in a capture data until the AttachProperties export function is called.

The following procedure identifies the steps necessary to implement the Register function.

To implement Register for one protocol

1. Define an array of PROPERTYINFO structures to describe each property that the protocol supports.
2. Call CreatePropertyDatabase to provide a protocol handle, and the number of properties that the protocol supports.
3. Call AddProperty in a loop to add each property defined in the PROPERTYINFO structure array.
4. If the protocol uses a handoff table, call CreateHandoffTable — after all the properties of the protocol are added to the property database.

The following code example identifies a basic implementation of Register. Note that a property database is created for a protocol that supports only two properties. This code example is taken from the generic parser that Network Monitor provides.

PROPERTYINFO MyProtocolPropertyTable[]
{
  // Summary property (0)
  {
     0,                               // Handle to property.
     0,                               // Reserved.
     "Summary",                       // Property label.
     "Summary of protocol packet",    // Property comment.
     PROP_TYPE_SUMMARY,               // Data type of property.
     PROP_QUAL_NONE,                  // Data type qualifier.
     NULL,                            // Reserved.
     80,                              // 
     FormatPropertyInstance           // 
  }

  // WORD property (1)
  {
     0,                               // Handle to property.
     0,                               // Reserved.
     "WORD property",                 // Property label.
     "16-bit WORD property",         // Property comment.
     PROP_TYPE_WORD,                  // Data type of property.
     PROP_QUAL_NONE,                  // Data type qualifier.
     NULL,                            // Reserved.
     80,                              // 
     FormatPropertyInstance           // 
  }

}


void BHAPI MyProtocolRegister( HPPROTOCOL hProtocol) 
{
  // Create property database.
  DWORD dwNumberOfProperties = 2;
  CreatePropertyDatabase (hProtocol,
                          dwNumberOfProperties
                          );
  
  // Add properties to database.
  WORD i;
  for( i=0; i< dwNumberOfProperties; i++)
  {
     AddProperty(hProtocol, &MyProtocolPropertyTable[i]);
  }

  // Create handoff table.
  CreateHandoffTable("myProtocolHandoffTable",
                          "myProtocol.ini",
                           hTable,
                           MaxEntries,
                           10       // Handoff set values are base 10.
                          )
}