DBClientFiles.NET

A blazing-fast DBC & DB2 reader for World of Warcraft's serialized database format.

Usage

Supported file types

Signature	WDBC	WDB2	WDB3	WDB4	WDB5	WDB6	WDC1	WDC2
Read	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❓	❌	❓	❌
Write	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌

✔️ Verified and tested. ❓ Implemented but not tested. ❌ Not supported.

WDB3 and WDB4 cannot be handled due to the files not being self-sufficient (and also because I'm lazy). Write support is on the way.

DBClientFiles.NET exposes multiple collection types:

Container types

StorageList<T>

This container should be your default go-to when reading a file.

var storage = new StorageList<AchievementEntry>("Achievement.dbc");

This container implements the IDisposable and IList<T> interfaces.

StorageEnumerable<T>

This container behaves pretty similarly to StorageList<T> with one simple difference: it provides lazily-loaded elements. It also implements the IDisposable and IEnumerable<T> interfaces.

var storageEnumerable = new StorageEnumerable<AchievementEntry>("Achievement.dbc");

StorageList

⚠️ This container is very much experimental and its API surface is subject to change.

This container is a loosely typed version of StorageList<T>. Instead of expecting the type of the record, it takes in a DynamicStructure and contains a collection of Record, indexed by their position within the file.

The DynamicStructure object itself is just a collection of implementations of the IRecordReader interface.

An example speaks louder than a thousand words:

var storage = new StorageList(new DynamicStructure()
    .With(new RecordMember<int>("ID"))
    .With(new RecordMember<int>("MapID"))
    /* etc */), StorageOptions.Default, "Achievement.dbc");

var firstRecord = storage[0];
var mapID = firstRecord["MapID"].Integer;

Attributes

CardinalityAttribute

This attribute is used to indicate the size of an array field or property. Behavior depends on the file format:

• For WDBC and WDB2: this attribute is required.
• For WDB5 and WDB6: the library is able to guess proper array sizes for the given members except the last one.
• For WDC1 and WDC2: the library is able to guess proper array size for all given members.

If you don't know what you should be doing, decorate your arrays.

IgnoreAttribute

This attribute is used to indicate that a field or property is to be ignored by the library. If the decorated member is either readonly or does not have a setter, this attribute is redundant.

IndexAttribute

This attribute is used to decorate the member of a record that is it's key. Behavior varies depending on the file format:

• For WDBC and WDB2 : If IndexAttribute is lacking, the first member is assumed to be the key.
• For WDB5 and higher: This attribute is considered redundant as files already identify their index column.

StorageOptions

• MemberType

  This is a simple way to tell the library you declared members as either fields or properties. Any other type obviously makes zero sense. This defaults to MemberTypes.Property.

• LoadMask

⚠️ Not yet implemented.

This property is a way to change the purpose of the library. Usually, you would want LoadMask.Records, but there are situations where you would open a file just to take a look at it's string table, or maybe just its structure. This property allows you to speed up execution by loading what you need. Defaults to LoadMask.Records.

• InternStrings

  By default, the CLR does not intern strings when they are not explicit in source. This means that any string that is in the file's string table and may be duplicated will appear more than once in memory and use twice the space.

  DBClientFiles.NET uses C#'s own internal string pool, which lives until the runtime terminates.

  ⚠️ Be careful with this. The performance impact of interning strings can be huge, since it leads to potentially unnecessary allocations, hash table lookups, and garbage collections. Use only with files where a majority of the strings are duplicates.

• OverrideSignedChecks

  Starting from WDC1, files contain additional information on their type, namely wether or not they are signed. If this property is set to true and one of your structure's declared member's signedness does not match the one specified by the file, an exception will be raised. This is otherwise ignored.

• CopyToMemory

  If set to true and the Stream provided to any of the types exposed by the library is not a MemoryStream, the library will instanciate a MemoryStream into which the input stream is copied. This can help when dealing with network streams (which are typically not seekable). This is ignored if the input stream does not support seek operations - in which case the MemoryStream mentionned above is created.

Declaring structures - Quirks and tips

ℹ️ Older formats such as WDBC and WDB2 do not contain much informations about fields, except their amount (including array sizes). This means that you should be very verbose about your structures:

public sealed class AchievementEntry
{
    [Index]
    public int ID { get; set; }
    ...
    [Cardinality(SizeConst = 16)]
    public string[] Title { get; set; }
    ...
    [Cardinality(SizeConst = 16)]
    public string[] Description { get; set; }
    ...
    [Cardinality(SizeConst = 16)]
    public string[] Rewards { get; set; }
    ...
}

⚠️ WDB5 and WDB6 records are aligned to the size of their largest member. This means that the library is able to calculate array sizes based solely on information provided by the file. However, this is the case for only a handful of files, and as such you should never rely on this behavior and at least specify the cardinality of the last member of the structure.

ℹ️ On the other hand, WDC1 and WDC2 contain so much information about members that you almost don't require attributes to make your structure work:

public sealed class AchievementEntry // WDC1
{
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
    public string Reward { get; set; }
    public int Flags { get; set; }
    public short InstanceID { get; set; }
    public short Supercedes { get; set; }
    public short Category { get; set; }
    public short UiOrder { get; set; }
    public short SharesCriteria { get; set; }
    public byte Faction { get; set; }
    public byte Points { get; set; }
    public byte MinimumCriteria { get; set; }
    [Index]
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public int IconFileID { get; set; }
    public uint CriteriaTree { get; set; }
}

Even then, IndexAttribute isn't actually required, since that information is contained within the file .