markjoshwel / datim

data as an image

datim 2.0.1

This project has been archived.

Data as an image.

• Installation
• Usage
• Changelog
• Technical Details
• License

Installation

pip install datim

Alternatively, install datim[optional] and get progress bar support.

Usage

datim has four commands:

• datim
• imdat
• datimp
• imdatp

datim and imdat check whether the compiled variant of datim is installed. If unavailable, it will fallback to the pure Python variant of datim. datimp and imdatp exclusively use the pure Python variant of the module.

$ datim
usage: datim [-h] [-o] [-np] [-nc] [-na] input output

(compiled) turns any file into an image

positional arguments:
  input               input file path
  output              output file path

optional arguments:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit
  -o, --overwrite     overwrite without confirmation
  -np, --no-progress  do not use tqdm
  -nc, --no-compress  do not compress data
  -na, --no-alpha     do not use alpha channel

$ imdat
usage: imdat [-h] [-o] [-np] [-nc] [-na] input output

(compiled) turns previously converted images into the original file

positional arguments:
  input               input file path
  output              output file path

optional arguments:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit
  -o, --overwrite     overwrite without confirmation
  -np, --no-progress  do not use tqdm
  -nc, --no-compress  do not compress data
  -na, --no-alpha     do not use alpha channel

Technical Details

An image created by datim is made up by the following: [header][data][trailing 0s]

• [header] -> "<length of [data] hex array encoded in base15 hex>F"

  This is made up of a base15 hex array (0-E) denoting the length of the (compressed) data hex array. It is then suffixed with a hex F, acting as a delimiter betweeen the [header] and [data] section. This method of storing the data hex array was chosen as to not use the alpha layer, which would increase the resulting image file size.

• [data]

  The (compressed) data is expressed naturally as its hexidecimal counterparts.

• [trailing 0s]

  After the [data] hex array are trailing 0s. Before 2.0.0, trailing data were randomly generated for cosmetic purposes, but was removed due for performance. The reason for the trailing data is due to all output images being squares which may fit data that has a length perfectly square root-able, which most data is not.

License

datim is unlicensed with The Unlicense.