Using FindResource() with a memory buffer instead of a file - c++
I'm trying to compile some png's into a RES file, which then will be compressed with zlib. In my main program, I want to decompress the RES file, store it in memory, and start using resources compiled within it. Normally I would use
FindResource(NULL, ...);
to find a resource embedded in my .exe file. But now the resource file resides in a memory buffer, to which the pointer I have. Is it possible to use FindResource with such a pointer, or does it work only with files?
Related
Embed .exe file into C++ program?
I wrote a c++ program and I want to execute my second program inside it, which is a exe file. The problem is I want to share my program to others as one single file. When I search on the internet, I found this solution. Just store the second .exe file as a binary resource inside the main .exe using an .rc file at compile-time. At run-time, you can access it using FindResource(), LoadResource(), and LockResource(), and then write it out to a temp file on disk before passing it to system(). But I don't understand how to "store the .exe file as a binary resource" I am currently using CreateProcess() to start my second program which working greatly. Can anyone write some example for me?
In your project's resource script (the .rc file in which icons, dialogs, etc. are defined), you can add a binary resource with a line like the following:
IDB_EMBEDEXE BINARY "<path>\\EmbedProgram.exe"
Where the IDB_EMBEDEXE token/macro should be defined in a header file that is included by both that resource script and any C++ source(s) that use(s) it; this will be the lpName argument given to the FindResource() call, which you can form using MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDB_EMBEDEXE). Specify "BINARY" (or L"BINARY" for Unicode builds) for the lpType argument.
Like this:
#define IDB_EMBEDEXE 13232 // Or whatever suitable value you need
//...
// In the C++ code:
HRSRC hResource = FindResource(NULL, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDB_EMBEDEXE), _TEXT("BINARY"));
HGLOBAL hGlobal = LoadResource(NULL, hResource);
size_t exeSiz = SizeofResource(NULL, hResource); // Size of the embedded data
void* exeBuf = LockResource(hGlobal); // usable pointer to that data
// You can now write the buffer to disk using "exeBuf" and "exeSiz"
The specified executable file will then be completely embedded (as a binary) resource in your built executable, and can be extracted, written to disk and executed as described in the article you quote.
How to open a gzip file using fopen (or a function with the same return value as fopen) in C++?
I currently have some code reading files which are not compressed, it uses the following approach to read a file in C++
FILE* id = fopen("myfile.dat", "r");
after obtaining id, different parts of the code access the file using fread, fseek, etc.
I would like to adapt my code so as to open a gzip version of the file, e.g. "myfile.dat.gz" without needing to change too much.
Ideally I would implement a wrapper to fopen, call it fopen2, which can read both myfile.dat and myfile.dat.gz, i.e. it should return a pointer to a FILE object, so that the remaining of the code does not need to be changed.
Any suggestions?
Thank you.
PS: it would be fine to decompress the whole file in memory, if this approach provides a solution
zlib provides analogs of fopen(), fread(), etc. called gzopen(), gzread(), etc. for reading and writing gzip files. If the file is not gzip-compressed, it will be read just as the f functions would. So you would only need to change the function names and link in zlib.
Correct way to extract array data from binary?
There is a classic way to embed resource files as a C language array into a binary file, so that we can store some external resource files such as .jpeg or .txt files into a binary.
For example, in the header file we can define an array:
const unsigned char xd_data[] = {
77,90,144,0,3,0,0,0,4,0,0,0,255,255,0,0,184,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,64,0,0,0,0,
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,240,0,0,
0,14,31,186,14,0,180,9,205,33,184,1,76,205,33,84,104,105,115,32,112,114,
111,103,114,97,109,32,99,97,110,110,111,116,32,98,101,32,114,117,110,
32,105,110,32,68,79,83,32,109,111,100,101,46,13,13,10,36,0,0,0,0,0,0,
0,66,163,223,218,6,194,177,137,6,194,177,137,6,194,177,137,105,221,187,
137,13,194,177,137,133,222,191,137,3,194,177,137,105,221,181,137,4,194,
177,137,136,202,238,137,4,194,177,137,6,194,176,137,73,194,177,137,133,
202,236,137,13,194,177,137,48,228,187,137,11,194,177,137,193,196,183,
137,7,194,177,137,82,105,99,104,6,194,177,137,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,80,69,0,0,76,1,4,0,65,162,32,86,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
0,224,0,47,1,11,1,6,0,0,100,0,0,0,74,0,0,0,0,0,0,228,113,0,0,0,16,0,0,
0,128,0,0,0,0,64,0,0,16,0,0,0,2,0,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,
224,0,0,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,16,0,0,16,0,0,0,0,16,0,0,16,0,0,0,
0,0,0,16,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,124,140,0,0,140,0,0,0,0,208,0,0,0,16,0
};
which contains the contents of the resource file, and it will be compile into the final binary.
There are lots of tools and tutorials on the web about this old trick, such as: http://www.rowleydownload.co.uk/arm/documentation/index.htm?http://www.rowleydownload.co.uk/arm/documentation/embed.htm, https://www.fourmilab.ch/xd/ and http://gareus.org/wiki/embedding_resources_in_executables#c_include_method.
However, looks like most of these pages are talking about how to embed the data into binary file using C style array.
My question is, what is the correct way to find the start address of the resource files in the compiled binary in order to extract them? I.e., how can I find the start address of xd_data in the compiled binary?
If you mean finding the byte address in the file where a data block starts just like objdump does but programmatically, then you can use the Binary File Descriptor library (BFD), see here and here.
if you stored data for example an image and you want to load it (for printing or what ever you want) then if you have a function (library) that load it from memory, as example void loadResImage(void * mem); just do loadResImage(xd_data), if not but you have a function that load it from the file, in that case save it to a temp file eg:
int fd=open("tmpfile");
int ret=write(fd,xd_data, sizeof(xd_data));
close(fd);
loadImageFile("tmpfile");
but if you want to access the data outside the program itself (hex editor for example, or an other program), in that case you have to add a starting mark and optionally an ending mark or sizeof data. eg:
const unsigned char xd_data[]={
...
'M','A','G','I','C'};
in example above the end of the data is known, you just do a search to find it. same way, play around and find a suitable way to store the size of the data. but beware of the compiler optimizations.
Is it possible to store binary files inside an exe
Is it possible to do this: (for educational purpose). suppose I have a image file "image.jpg" I want to create a program when it executes it should create this image. That means the data of the image is stored in the exe. Is this possible to do? Something like this: link the image file from resource.rc then tell the compiler to get the data and store it (something like this unsigned char data_buffer[]="binary data of the image" then when the program is executed I can write this data to a file) (I'm using C++ with mingw compiler) Any help is highly appreciated.
There are several options:
1) Add it as a byte array in a source file. It is trivial to write an auxiliary program that reads the bytes from the files and writes the C source. E.g.:
data_jpg.c:
unsigned char data_jpg[] = {1,2,3... };
data_jpg.h:
extern char data_jpg[];
const size_t data_jpg_size = 1000;
2) Add it as a binary resource to the executable. You said "exe", did you? So you are likely on Windows. Window EXE files can have binary resources, that can be located using the resource API. See the FindResource, LoadResource and GlobalLock, functions.
resource.rc
ID_DATA_JPG FILE "data.jpg"
3) Convert the binary file directly into a OBJ file and link it into the executable. In the old good days of turbo-c used to be a BINOBJ tool for that. And GNU tools can do it, AFAIk, but with MS tools, I really cannot tell.
With a PE file, you can add data(include bin data) to the PE file's tail as your resource. You just remember the PE file's size. But I'm not sure of that whether you need change the PE's checksum. And use VC++ Compiler to embed resources would be pretty much easy.
Emulate a file pointer C++?
I am trying to load a bitmap from an archive. The bitmap class I have takes a character pointer to a filename and then loads it if it is in the same directory. The bitmap loading class is well tested and I don't want to mess with it too much. Problem is it uses a file pointer to load and do all of its file manipulation. Is there any way to emulate a file pointer and actually have it read from a chunk in memory instead? Sorry if this is a bizarre question.
Refactor it and create functions that takes the exact same parameters as before : If you used fopen, fread and fseek that read from disk, create mopen, mread and mseek that read file from memory. You'll only have to fix the name of the functions. It should be easy without risk and code won't look like an dirty hack in the end.
You can also use a pipe. A pipe is a piece of memory where you can read and write using file primitives. Which is basically what you want (Assuming POSIX Operating system) create a pipe: int p[2]; pipe(p); use fdopen() to turn the pipe file descriptor into a FILE* FILE *emulated_file = fdopen(p[0], "r"); then write whatever you want to the write end of the pipe : write(p[1], 17 ,"whatevereyouwant"); Now : buf[32]; fread(&buf,1,32, emulated_file); cout<<buf<<endl; willl output "whateveryouwant".
Check out John Ratcliff's File Interface replacement for standard file I/O. It supports the feature you need. You'll still need to refactor the bitmap loading code to use the new interface. However, this interface supports loading from file on disk, or memory chunk in memory (as well as writing to file on disk, or to expandable memory chunks).