SD_BUS_PATH_ENCODE(3)

NAME
sd_bus_path_encode, sd_bus_path_decode - Convert an external identifier into an object path and back

SYNOPSIS

#include <systemd/sd-bus.h>

int sd_bus_path_encode(const char *prefix, const char *external_id, char **ret_path);

int sd_bus_path_decode(const char *prefix, const char *path, char **ret_external_id);

DESCRIPTION

sd_bus_path_encode() and sd_bus_path_decode() convert external identifier strings into object paths and back. These functions are useful to map application-specific string identifiers of any kind into bus object paths in a simple, reversible and safe way.

sd_bus_path_encode() takes a bus path prefix and an external identifier string as arguments, plus a place to store the returned bus path string. The bus path prefix must be a valid bus path, starting with a slash "/", and not ending in one. The external identifier string may be in any format, may be the empty string, and has no restrictions on the charset — however, it must always be NUL-terminated. The returned string will be the concatenation of the bus path prefix plus an escaped version of the external identifier string. This operation may be reversed with sd_bus_decode(). It is recommended to only use external identifiers that generally require little escaping to be turned into valid bus path identifiers (for example, by sticking to a 7-bit ASCII character set), in order to ensure the resulting bus path is still short and easily processed.

sd_bus_path_decode() reverses the operation of sd_bus_path_encode() and thus regenerates an external identifier string from a bus path. It takes a bus path and a prefix string, plus a place to store the returned external identifier string. If the bus path does not start with the specified prefix, 0 is returned and the returned string is set to NULL. Otherwise, the string following the prefix is unescaped and returned in the external identifier string.

The escaping used will replace all characters which are invalid in a bus object path by "_", followed by a hexadecimal value. As a special case, the empty string will be replaced by a lone "_".

RETURN VALUE

On success, sd_bus_path_encode() returns positive or 0, and a valid bus path in the return argument. On success, sd_bus_path_decode() returns a positive value if the prefixed matched, or 0 if it did not. If the prefix matched, the external identifier is returned in the return parameter. If it did not match, NULL is returned in the return parameter. On failure, a negative errno-style error number is returned by either function. The returned strings must be free(3)'d by the caller.

NOTES

sd_bus_path_encode() and sd_bus_path_decode() are available as a shared library, which can be compiled and linked to with the libsystemd pkg-config(1) file.

SEE ALSO

systemd(1), sd-bus(3), free(3)