IDA controllable disassembly graph

[Nir Izraeli]

HI,

I'm interested in displaying a second "disassembly" window that
contains my own disassembly listings, which doesn't exist in the
analyzed binary.
the best idea i had up till now was to insert the second disassembly
listings into the analyzed IDB in a different code segment.
this will work but it is sub-optimal.

i've seen IDAPython has a few graph classes, but it doesn't have a
disassembly graph classes. the only function which that seemed
relevant was the open_disassembly_graph for which i couldn't control
the actual disassembly, while the best thing for me would be to have a
disassembly graph that i could insert the binary code from memory
without them being present in the IDB.

another option would be to be able to use AddNode in a disassembly
window

i much rather have it in IDAPython, but i am willing to add the python
bindings or write it in C if necessary.

thanks!

[Steve Coleman]

You probably would do well to read this:

IDA Pro, Python and Qt
http://www.hexblog.com/?p=229

In short, IDA 6.0+ now allows Qt interaction through the PySide Python
library. It can be used to make interactive Qt windows compatible with
the IDA Pro 6.x Qt UI.

http://www.pyside.org/

You will need to remember though that IDA is still single threaded, so
multiple access to the database could corrupt it if multiple writes
occur simultaneously.

[nir izraeli]

hi Steve,

thanks for the reply!

i have read this blog post (as well as another one related to the subject) and i have been doing a bit of QT using pyside in IDA.

however,  i want to use IDA's internal disasssembly graphs capabilities (so it would look the same but also to save development time).

i was able to create graphs with IDAPython's GraphViewer, and i was able to create controls using pyside. but it seems i cannot find a way to get some kind of QT/Pyside handle for the disassembly view i've created so i could manipulate it.

i don't want to create my own PluginForm or GraphViewer sub-classes, i want to create a "DisassemblyGraph" subclass.

moreover, i'd prefer using a higher-level API to create nodes, rather then creating them using bare QT API (since a lot of the coloring/etc is done by IDA and i wish to keep it the same). obviously i can handle without it.

[Steve Coleman]

I'm just getting started looking into Qt/PySide with IDA myself, so I
certainly can not give a definitive answer here, just at guess, but I
would look into something like:

Module idaapi TForm find_tform(caption)
locate a form by its title
e.g. frm = _idaapi.find_tform(title)


Module idaapi :: Class PluginForm
FormToPyQtWidget(form, ctx=<module '__main__' from 'hrdoc.py'>)
Use this method to convert a TForm* to a QWidget to be used by PySide

Doing it with PySide is a little bit beyond me at the moment, but it
should be doable. Qt can not enumerate windows in other apps, but
because a plugin is inside of IDA, so it should be possible to enumerate
all IDA child windows.