Copy TByteDynArray (array of byte) to string - delphi

How can I copy contents of a TByteDynArray variable to a string variable or even better, to a TMemoryStream?
Remy, thanks for your answer.
Well, I can't get it to work.
I'm doing this:
obtReferenciaPagamentoResponse.pdf is a TByteDynArray (array of byte) that comes throught a WebService call, that is referenced on the XSD like xsd:base64Binary.
procedure saveFile;
var
LInput, LOutput: TMemoryStream;
Id: Integer;
Buff: AnsiString;
//Buff: String;
begin
LInput := TMemoryStream.Create;
LOutput := TMemoryStream.Create;
// Tried like this also
//SetLength(Buff, Length(obtReferenciaPagamentoResponse.pdf));
//Move(obtReferenciaPagamentoResponse.pdf[0], Buff[1], Length(obtReferenciaPagamentoResponse.pdf));
// Tried other charsets
Buff := TEncoding.Ansi.GetString(obtReferenciaPagamentoResponse.pdf);
LInput.Write(Buff[1], Length(Buff) * SizeOf(Buff[1]));
LInput.Position := 0;
TNetEncoding.Base64.Decode(LInput, LOutput);
LOutput.Position := 0;
LOutput.SaveToFile(SaveDialog2.FileName);
LInput.Free;
LOutput.Free;
end;
But the PDF file is saved incompleted, I guess, because is always corrupted on open.
What am I doing wrong?

String is an alias for UnicodeString since 2009. As UnicodeString characters are now encoded in UTF-16, it does not make sense to copy raw bytes into a (Unicode)String unless the bytes are also encoded in UTF-16. In that case, you can simply use SetLength() to allocate the String's length to the appropriate number of Chars and then Move() the raw bytes into the String's allocated memory. Otherwise, use TEncoding.GetString() instead to decode the bytes into a UTF-16 String using the appropriate charset.
As for TMemoyStream, it has a Write() method for writing raw bytes into the stream. Simply set its Position property to the desired offset and then write the bytes.

Related

How pass word number to widestring?

First of all I am sorry that I cannot better to describe my problem.
What I have is Word number 65025 which is 0xFE01 or
11111110 00000001 in binary. And I want to pass the value to wstr Word => 11111110 00000001.
I found that using typecast does not work.
And one more question here. If I want to add another number like 10000 => 0x03E8 how to do it. So in the result the widestring should refer to values 0xFE01 0x03E8.
And then, how to retrieve the same numbers from widestring to word back?
var wstr: Widestring;
wo: Word;
begin
wo := 65025;
wstr := Widestring(wo);
wo := 10000;
wstr := wstr + Widestring(wo);
end
Edit:
I'm giving another, simpler example of what I want... If I have word value 49, which is equal to ASCII value 1, then I want the wstr be '1' which is b00110001 in binary terms. I want to copy the bits from word number to the string.
It looks like you want to interpret a word as a UTF-16 code unit. In Unicode Delphi you would use the Chr() function. But I suspect you use an ANSI Delphi. In which case cast to WideChar with WideChar(wo).
You are casting a Word to a WideString. In Delphi, casting usually doesn't convert, so you are simply re-interpreting the value 65025 as a pointer (a WideString is a pointer). But 65025 is not a valid pointer value.
You will have to explicitly convert the Word to a WideString, e.g. with a function like this (untested, but should work):
function WordToBinary(W: Word): WideString;
var
I: Integer;
begin
Result := '0000000000000000';
for I := 0 to 15 do // process bits 0..15
begin
if Odd(W) then
Result[16 - I] := '1';
W := W shr 1;
end;
end;
Now you can do something like:
wo := 65025;
wstr := WordToBinary(wo);
wo := 10000;
wstr := wstr + ' ' + WordToBinary(wo);
For the reverse, you will have to write a function that converts from a WideString to a Word. I'll leave that exercise to you.
Again, you can't cast. You will have to explicitly convert. Both ways.

Convert encoding of TMemoryStream to utf8

I have a file opened in TMemoryStream. Its current encoding can be ANSI or UTF8 with BOM. I have to convert the encoding of TMemoryStream to UTF8. How do I do that?
If you are able to change the TMemoryStream to its descendant TBytesStream you can just use the Convert function from TEncoding.
var
stream: TBytesStream;
bytes: TBytesStream;
...
TEncoding.GetBufferEncoding(stream.Bytes, curEncoding);
if curEncoding <> TEncoding.UTF8 then begin
bytes := TEncoding.Convert(curEncoding, TEncoding.UTF8, stream.Bytes);
stream.Free;
stream := TBytesStream.Create(bytes);
end;
Not sure if it is the most efficient way, but at least it is one way and it only needs a couple of lines, which in turn is also some sort of efficiency.

Delphi Lockbox Hashing

I need to hash a string, preferably as SHA512, although it could be SHA256, SHA1, MD5 or CRC32.
I have downloaded Lockbox 3, put a TCryptographicLibrary and a THash component on a form, set the Hash property to SHA-512 and used the following code to produce a test result:
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
Hash1.HashString('myhashtest');
Edit1.Text := Stream_To_AnsiString(Hash1.HashOutputValue);
end;
To best illustrate the problem, I have gone on to an online hash calculator and the MD5 hash of 'myhashtest' is ff91e22313f0a41b46719e7ee6f99451 but setting the hash property in my test program to MD5 results in ÿ‘â#ð¤Fqž~æù”Q which is clearly wrong. I have tried the same test using other Hash properties, including the SHA512 which i want, and they all return rubbish.
Where am I going wrong?
THash.HashOutputValue is a stream of the raw hashed bytes. It appears that Stream_To_AnsiString() merely copies those raw bytes as-is into an AnsiString, it does not encode the bytes in any way. What you are looking for is the hex encoded version of the raw bytes instead. I do know that LockBox has a Stream_To_Base64() function (as shown in this example), but I do not know if it has a Stream_To_Hex() type of function. If it does not, you can easily create your own, eg:
function Stream_To_Hex(Stream: TStream): AnsiString;
var
NumBytes, I: Integer;
B: Byte;
begin
NumBytes := Stream.Size - Stream.Position;
SetLength(Result, NumBytes * 2);
for I := 0 to NumBytes-1 do
begin
Stream.ReadBuffer(B, 1);
BinToHex(#B, #Result[(I*2)+1], 1);
end;
end;
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
Hash1.HashString('myhashtest');
Edit1.Text := Stream_To_Hex(Hash1.HashOutputValue);
end;
Many cryptographic functions 'silently' (i.e. without stating so in the docs) output and require Base64- or hex-encoded strings (and also often AnsiStrings). This is because encrypted text can contain any data, and as soon as you start treating that as 'strings', string handling functions can easily choke on that (e.g. null-terminated strings containing a null). By Base-64/hex encoding the cryptotext you make sure it will be plain old ASCII characters that evene old code can read/write.
If you dig around a little in the cryptocode or its method parameters you usually can determine that, and convert your strings accordingly.
I figured out where stream_to_hex, it is inside uTPLB_StreamUtils (pas or hpp) depending if you are using c builder or delphi.

Assign [array of byte] to a Variant with no Unicode conversion

Consider the following code snippet (in Delphi XE2):
function PrepData(StrVal: string; Base64Val: AnsiString): OleVariant;
begin
Result := VarArrayCreate([0, 1], varVariant);
Result[0] := StrVal;
Result[1] := Base64Val;
end;
Base64Val is a binary value encoded as Base64 (so no null bytes). The (OleVariant) Result is automatically marshalled and sent between a client app and a DataSnap server.
When I capture the traffic with Wireshark, I see that both StrVal and Base64Val are transferred as Unicode strings. If I can, I would like to avoid the Unicode conversion for Base64Val. I've looked at all the Variant types and don't see anything other than varString that can transfer an array of characters.
I found this question that shows how to create a variant array of bytes. I'm thinking that I could use this technique instead of using an AnsiString. I'm curious though, is there another way to assign an array of non-Unicode character data to a Variant without a conversion to a Unicode string?
Delphi's implementation supports storing AnsiString and UnicodeString in a Variant, using custom variant type codes. These codes are varString and varUString.
But interop will typically use standard OLE variants and the OLE string, varOleStr, is 16 bit encoded. That would seem to be the reason for your observation.
You'll need to put the data in as an array of bytes if you do wish to avoid a conversion to 16 bit text. Doing so renders base64 encoding pointless. Stop base64 encoding the payload and send the binary in a byte array.
Keeping with the example in the question, this is how I made it work (using code and comments from David's answer to another question as referenced in my question):
function PrepData(StrVal: string; Data: TBytes): OleVariant;
var
SafeArray: PVarArray;
begin
Result := VarArrayCreate([0, 1], varVariant);
Result[0] := StrVal;
Result[1] := VarArrayCreate([1, Length(Data)], varByte);
SafeArray := VarArrayAsPSafeArray(Result[1]);
Move(Pointer(Data)^, SafeArray.Data^, Length(Data));
end;
Then on the DataSnap server, I can extract the binary data from the OleVariant like this, assuming Value is Result[1] from the Variant Array in the OleVariant:
procedure GetBinaryData(Value: Variant; Result: TMemoryStream);
var
SafeArray: PVarArray;
begin
SafeArray := VarArrayAsPSafeArray(Value);
Assert(SafeArray.ElementSize=1);
Result.Clear;
Result.WriteBuffer(SafeArray.Data^, SafeArray.Bounds[0].ElementCount);
end;

How to convert AnsiChar to UnicodeChar with specific CodePage?

I'm generating texture atlases for rendering Unicode texts in my app. Source texts are stored in ANSI codepages (1250, 1251, 1254, 1257, etc). I want to be able to generate all the symbols from each ANSI codepage.
Here is the outline of the code I would expect to have:
for I := 0 to 255 do
begin
anChar := AnsiChar(I); //obtain AnsiChar
//Apply codepage without converting the chars
//<<--- this part does not work, showing:
//"E2033 Types of actual and formal var parameters must be identical"
SetCodePage(anChar, aCodepages[K], False);
//Assign AnsiChar to UnicodeChar (automatic conversion)
uniChar := anChar;
//Here we get Unicode character index
uniCode := Ord(uniChar);
end;
The code above does not works (E2033) and I'm not sure it is a proper solution at all. Perhaps there's much shorter version.
What is the proper way of converting AnsiChar into Unicode with specific codepage in mind?
I would do it like this:
function AnsiCharToWideChar(ac: AnsiChar; CodePage: UINT): WideChar;
begin
if MultiByteToWideChar(CodePage, 0, #ac, 1, #Result, 1) <> 1 then
RaiseLastOSError;
end;
I think you should avoid using strings for what is in essence a character operation. If you know up front which code pages you need to support then you can hard code the conversions into a lookup table expressed as an array constant.
Note that all the characters that are defined in the ANSI code pages map to Unicode characters from the Basic Multilingual Plane and so are represented by a single UTF-16 character. Hence the size assumptions of the code above.
However, the assumption that you are making, and that this answer persists, is that a single byte represents a character in an ANSI character set. That's a valid assumption for many character sets, for example the single byte western character sets like 1252. But there are character sets like 932 (Japanese), 949 (Koren) etc. that are double byte character sets. Your entire approach breaks down for those code pages. My guess is that only wish to support single byte character sets.
If you are writing cross-platform code then you can replace MultiByteToWideChar with UnicodeFromLocaleChars.
You can also do it in one step for all characters. Here is an example for codepage 1250:
var
encoding: TEncoding;
bytes: TBytes;
unicode: TArray<Word>;
I: Integer;
S: string;
begin
SetLength(bytes, 256);
for I := 0 to 255 do
bytes[I] := I;
SetLength(unicode, 256);
encoding := TEncoding.GetEncoding(1250); // change codepage as needed
try
S := encoding.GetString(bytes);
for I := 0 to 255 do
unicode[I] := Word(S[I+1]); // as long as strings are 1-based
finally
encoding.Free;
end;
end;
Here is the code I have found to be working well:
var
I: Byte;
anChar: AnsiString;
Tmp: RawByteString;
uniChar: Char;
uniCode: Word;
begin
for I := 0 to 255 do
begin
anChar := AnsiChar(I);
Tmp := anChar;
SetCodePage(Tmp, aCodepages[K], False);
uniChar := UnicodeString(Tmp)[1];
uniCode := Word(uniChar);
<...snip...>
end;

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