Category: Nimble Commander

When files from native MacOSX filesystems (like HFS+) are copied to some storage that doesn’t support extended attributes (xattrs) natively, those attributes are not lost, instead they are placed in special files with a “._” prefix. For archives these paths may also contain “__MACOSX/” directory prefix.
These files have an ancient format called AppleDouble, which once was well documented but sadly lacks any support from current-gen Apple’s APIs.
Sometimes it’s necessary to work with such format, in my case – with compressed files inside zip archives. Ignoring separately-stored extended attributes may cause unwished consequences, mostly related with a user experience (invalid encodings, lost Finder’s labels etc) and is generally bad.
Here below is a code snippet which parses “._” file’s content and extracts a list of extended attributes with it’s data. This data may be passed to setxattr(..) function or be interpreted somehow. Some structures layout and functions are taken from Apple’s copyfile.c source.

Header (AppleDouble.h):
#pragma once
#include <stdint.h>
struct AppleDoubleEA
{
    // no allocations, only pointing at original memory buffer
    const void* data;
    const char* name; // null-terminated UTF-8 string
    uint32_t    data_sz;
   uint32_t    name_len; // length excluding zero-terminator. no zero-length names are allowed
};

/**
 * ExtractEAFromAppleDouble interprets a memory block of EAs packed into AppleDouble file, usually for archives.
 * Returns NULL or an array of AppleDoubleEA (number of _ea_count) allocated with malloc.
 * Caller is responsible for deallocating this memory.
 */
AppleDoubleEA *ExtractEAFromAppleDouble(const void *_memory_buf,
                                        size_t      _memory_size,
                                        size_t     *_ea_count
                                        );

Source file (AppleDouble.cpp):
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/xattr.h>
#include <libkern/OSByteOrder.h>
#include “AppleDouble.h”

#define ADH_MAGIC     0x00051607
#define ADH_VERSION   0x00020000
#define ADH_MACOSX    “Mac OS X        “
#define AD_DATA          1   /* Data fork */
#define AD_RESOURCE      2   /* Resource fork */
#define AD_REALNAME      3   /* File’s name on home file system */
#define AD_COMMENT       4   /* Standard Mac comment */
#define AD_ICONBW        5   /* Mac black & white icon */
#define AD_ICONCOLOR     6   /* Mac color icon */
#define AD_UNUSED        7   /* Not used */
#define AD_FILEDATES     8   /* File dates; create, modify, etc */
#define AD_FINDERINFO    9   /* Mac Finder info & extended info */
#define AD_MACINFO      10   /* Mac file info, attributes, etc */
#define AD_PRODOSINFO   11   /* Pro-DOS file info, attrib., etc */
#define AD_MSDOSINFO    12   /* MS-DOS file info, attributes, etc */
#define AD_AFPNAME      13   /* Short name on AFP server */
#define AD_AFPINFO      14   /* AFP file info, attrib., etc */
#define AD_AFPDIRID     15   /* AFP directory ID */
#define AD_ATTRIBUTES   AD_FINDERINFO
#define ATTR_HDR_MAGIC     0x41545452   /* ‘ATTR’ */
#define FINDERINFOSIZE 32

#pragma pack(1)
typedef struct apple_double_entry
{
u_int32_t   type;     /* entry type: see list, 0 invalid */
u_int32_t   offset;   /* entry data offset from the beginning of the file. */
u_int32_t   length;   /* entry data length in bytes. */
} apple_double_entry_t;

/* Entries are aligned on 4 byte boundaries */
typedef struct attr_entry
{
u_int32_t   offset;    /* file offset to data */
u_int32_t   length;    /* size of attribute data */
u_int16_t   flags;
u_int8_t    namelen;   /* length of name including NULL termination char */
u_int8_t    name[1];   /* NULL-terminated UTF-8 name (up to 128 bytes max) */
} attr_entry_t;

typedef struct apple_double_header
{
u_int32_t   magic;         /* == ADH_MAGIC */
u_int32_t   version;       /* format version: 2 = 0x00020000 */
u_int32_t   filler[4];
u_int16_t   numEntries;   /* number of entries which follow */
apple_double_entry_t   entries[2];  /* ‘finfo’ & ‘rsrc’ always exist */
u_int8_t    finfo[FINDERINFOSIZE];  /* Must start with Finder Info (32 bytes) */
u_int8_t    pad[2];        /* get better alignment inside attr_header */
} apple_double_header_t;

/* Header + entries must fit into 64K <– guess not true since 10.7 .MK. */
typedef struct attr_header
{
apple_double_header_t  appledouble;
u_int32_t   magic;        /* == ATTR_HDR_MAGIC */
u_int32_t   debug_tag;    /* for debugging == file id of owning file */
u_int32_t   total_size;   /* total size of attribute header + entries + data */
u_int32_t   data_start;   /* file offset to attribute data area */
u_int32_t   data_length;  /* length of attribute data area */
u_int32_t   reserved[3];
u_int16_t   flags;
u_int16_t   num_attrs;
} attr_header_t;
#pragma pack()

#define SWAP16(x) OSSwapBigToHostInt16(x)
#define SWAP32(x) OSSwapBigToHostInt32(x)
#define SWAP64(x) OSSwapBigToHostInt64(x)
#define ATTR_ALIGN 3L  /* Use four-byte alignment */
#define ATTR_DATA_ALIGN 1L  /* Use two-byte alignment */
#define ATTR_ENTRY_LENGTH(namelen)  
((sizeof(attr_entry_t) – 1 + (namelen) + ATTR_ALIGN) & (~ATTR_ALIGN))
#define ATTR_NEXT(ae)  
(attr_entry_t *)((u_int8_t *)(ae) + ATTR_ENTRY_LENGTH((ae)->namelen))

static const u_int32_t emptyfinfo[8] = {0};

/*
 * Endian swap Apple Double header
 */
static void
swap_adhdr(apple_double_header_t *adh)
{
   int count;
   int i;
    
   count = (adh->magic == ADH_MAGIC) ? adh->numEntries : SWAP16(adh->numEntries);
    
   adh->magic      = SWAP32 (adh->magic);
   adh->version    = SWAP32 (adh->version);
   adh->numEntries = SWAP16 (adh->numEntries);
    
   for (i = 0; i < count; i++)
   {
      adh->entries[i].type   = SWAP32 (adh->entries[i].type);
      adh->entries[i].offset = SWAP32 (adh->entries[i].offset);
      adh->entries[i].length = SWAP32 (adh->entries[i].length);
   }
}

/*
 * Endian swap extended attributes header
 */
static void
swap_attrhdr(attr_header_t *ah)
{
   ah->magic       = SWAP32 (ah->magic);
   ah->debug_tag   = SWAP32 (ah->debug_tag);
   ah->total_size  = SWAP32 (ah->total_size);
   ah->data_start  = SWAP32 (ah->data_start);
   ah->data_length = SWAP32 (ah->data_length);
   ah->flags       = SWAP16 (ah->flags);
   ah->num_attrs   = SWAP16 (ah->num_attrs);
}

static bool IsAppleDouble(const void *_memory_buf, size_t _memory_size)
{
    const apple_double_header_t *adhdr = (const apple_double_header_t *)_memory_buf;
    if(_memory_size < sizeof(apple_double_header_t) – 2 ||
       SWAP32(adhdr->magic) != ADH_MAGIC ||
       SWAP32(adhdr->version) != ADH_VERSION ||
       SWAP16(adhdr->numEntries) != 2 ||
       SWAP32(adhdr->entries[0].type) != AD_FINDERINFO
       )
        return false;
    
    return true;
}

AppleDoubleEA *ExtractEAFromAppleDouble(const void *_memory_buf,
                                        size_t      _memory_size,
                                        size_t     *_ea_count
                                        )
{
    if(!_memory_buf || !_memory_size || !_ea_count)
        return 0;
    
    if(!IsAppleDouble(_memory_buf, _memory_size))
        return 0;
    
    apple_double_header_t adhdr = *(const apple_double_header_t *) _memory_buf;
    swap_adhdr(&adhdr);
    
    bool has_finfo = memcmp(adhdr.finfo, emptyfinfo, sizeof(emptyfinfo)) != 0;
    
    AppleDoubleEA *eas = 0;
    int eas_last = 0;
    
    if(adhdr.entries[0].length > FINDERINFOSIZE)
    {
        attr_header_t attrhdr = *(const attr_header_t *)_memory_buf;
        swap_attrhdr(&attrhdr);
        
        if (attrhdr.magic == ATTR_HDR_MAGIC)
        {
            int count = attrhdr.num_attrs;
            eas = (AppleDoubleEA*) malloc( sizeof(AppleDoubleEA) * (has_finfo ? count + 1 : count) );
            
            const attr_entry_t *entry = (const attr_entry_t *)((char*)_memory_buf + sizeof(attr_header_t));
            for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
            {
                if((char*)entry + sizeof(attr_entry_t) > (char*)_memory_buf + _memory_size)
                    break; // out-of-boundary guard to be safe about memory (not)corrupting
                
                u_int32_t offset = SWAP32(entry->offset);
                u_int32_t length = SWAP32(entry->length);
                u_int32_t namelen = 0;
                const char *name = (const char*)&entry->name[0];
                
                // safely calculate a name len
                for(const char *si = name; si < (char*)_memory_buf + _memory_size && (*si) != 0; ++si, ++namelen)
                    ;
                
                
                if(namelen > 0 &&
                   name + namelen < (char*)_memory_buf + _memory_size &&
                   name[namelen] == 0 &&
                   offset + length <= _memory_size)
                { // seems to be a valid EA
                    eas[eas_last].data = (char*)_memory_buf + offset;
                    eas[eas_last].data_sz = length;
                    eas[eas_last].name = name;
                    eas[eas_last].name_len = namelen;
                    ++eas_last;
                }
                entry = ATTR_NEXT(entry);
            }
        }
    }
    
    if(has_finfo)
    {
        if(!eas) // no extended attributes except FinderInfo was found
            eas = (AppleDoubleEA*) malloc( sizeof(AppleDoubleEA) );
        eas[eas_last].data = &((const apple_double_header_t *)_memory_buf)->finfo[0];
        eas[eas_last].data_sz = 32;
        eas[eas_last].name = XATTR_FINDERINFO_NAME; // “com.apple.FinderInfo”
        eas[eas_last].name_len = 20;
        ++eas_last;
    }
    
    *_ea_count = eas_last;
    
    return eas;
}