protoview

• Viewing protocol messages.
• Beginning with HTTP.

resources

• https://github.com/PiRogueToolSuite/pcapng-utils
• https://pts-project.org/
• https://github.com/gaainf/pcaper
• https://kroki.io/
• https://www.wireshark.org/
• https://plantuml.com/link
• https://www.jsonrpc.org/specification
• https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/
• https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/specification/#appendix-b-relationship-to-mcp-model-context-protocol
• https://a2ui.org/
• https://a2ui.org/specification/v0.8-a2ui/

Phases

Phase	Command	Comment
1	pvcapture	capture protocol messages exchanged between applications (typically HTTP clients and servers)
2	pvinspect	captured messages -> json-lines
3	pvrrdump	json-lines -> (requests and response files + correlating csv)
4	pvrrenumi	(correlating csv) -> (request, response with body csv)
5	pvrrenumitopuml	(request, response with body csv) -> (plantuml diagram)
6	pvgenseqdhtml	(platuml diagram) -> html

See make dependency tree

Running

Capturing packets

• Run these commands to capture messages on port 10002 on the local machine

  sudo usermod -a -G wireshark {your username}
  newgrp wireshark
  bash
  ./pvcapture.sh 10002 > 10002.pcapng   # 10002 is the server port number
  

• Run the applications

• Stop the applications

• Stop the pvcapture (CTRL+C)

• captured sample

Creating a sequence diagram (HTML)

make

Ouputs the following

# unzip (A2UI process interaction packet capture zip)
unzip 10002.run.05.pcapng.zip
Archive:  10002.run.05.pcapng.zip
  inflating: 10002.run.05.pcapng     

# (packet capture (pcapng)) -> (json-lines (jsonl))
./pvinspect.sh -p 10002 10002.run.05.pcapng > 10002.run.05.jsonl

# (json-lines (jsonl)) -> ((request, response) files, (request, response) csv)
./pvrrdump.sh -P xxx 10002.run.05.jsonl > xxx.pvrrdump_map.csv

# ((request, response) csv) -> ((request, response) interaction with httpbody as csv)
./pvrrenumi.sh xxx.pvrrdump_map.csv > xxx.pvrrenumi_map.csv

# ((request, response) interaction with httpbody as csv) -> (plantuml sequence diagram)
python3 pvrrenumitopuml.py --folder-path /home/sridhar/github_projects/protoview xxx.pvrrenumi_map.csv > xxx.seqd.puml

# (plantuml sequence diagram) -> (html sequence diagram)
./pvgenseqdhtml.sh --template-html pvseqdtempl.html --puml-source xxx.seqd.puml > seqd.html

Viewing the created sequence diagram

make viewseq

A view of make dependencies

make xxx.make.tree.txt

Output : make dependency tree

Choose a HTTP body and expand/collapse

pvhttpbodychooser.sh -l
pvhttpbodychooser.sh 1