Network Protocol/PARAM-STRING

This pages is related to MKWii Network Protocol and describes the packet type PARAM-STRING.

Description

PARAM-STRING is a very simple protocol to transfer named parameters and their values. The complete data is sent as a ASCII string using the format:

\NAME1\VALUE1\NAME2\VALUE2\NAME3\VALUE3\...\FINAL\

The PARAM-STRING itself is not null terminated, only the packet length defined the end of the string. The backslash character ("\") is used as a separator and can't be used for the values. After splitting the string at the backslash separator you have an even number of substrings. 2 substrings together are one PARAMETER with NAME and VALUE. The parameter LIST is always terminated by a final parameter with an empty value. A PARAM-STRING may contain 1 or more LISTS.

Naming Convention & Syntax

PARAM_STRING    := COMPLETE_LIST  [ PARAM_STRING ]
COMPLETE_LIST   := LIST  FINAL_PARAM
LIST            := PARAMETER  [ LIST ]
PARAMETER       := '\' NAME '\' VALUE
NAME            := NAME_CHAR  [ NAME ]
NAME_CHAR       := 'a' | 'b' | ... | 'z'
VALUE           := VALUE_CHAR  [ VALUE ]
VALUE_CHAR      := any_but_not_backslash
FINAL_PARAMETER := '\final\'

Some notes:

any_but_not_backslash: Any character (also an ASCII control character), but not a backslash.
'...': A literal character or string.
[...]: Optional parts. They are often used as self reference to define a list of the same element.
|: An alternative element. Use exact one of the alternatives.

Display Format

Here is an example string:

\name1\\name2\VALUE2\name3\VALUE3\final\\name4\\name5\VALUE5\final\

A more readable representation of the same string (also used by mkw-ana) is:

    name1 =
    name2 = VALUE2
    name3 = VALUE3
    final =
    name4 =
    name5 = VALUE5
    final =

Special Packets

Sometime you can find packets with exact 6 NULL bytes. These packets are a kind of acknowledgable.

Examples

In the following example, the parameter statstring contains a parameter string with a slash as separator.

          status = 1
         sesskey = 262611642
      statstring = /SCM/1/SCN/0/VER/90
       locstring =
           final =

       updatepro =
         sesskey = 262611642
       firstname = Wii:4113862228885420@RMCE
       partnerid = 11
           final =

In the next example, the parameter msg contains a parameter string with a pipe as separator.

              bm = 100
               f = 295941470
             msg = |s|0|ss|Offline
           final =

Usage

The following servers use PARAM-STRING packets for data transmission:

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