Reading PXML and icon

A PND file is a SquashFS or ISO image with PXML metadata and a PNG icon appended directly to the end of the file. Launchers and menus rely on this appended PXML to discover and display applications without mounting the archive. See the PXML specification for the full format reference. The PndStreamExtensions methods read PXML and icon directly from the raw stream, so you do not need to open the archive filesystem at all. This is faster when you only need metadata or the icon.

Read PXML as a string

GetPxml searches backwards from the end of the stream for the <PXML> block and returns it as a UTF-8 string with an XML declaration prepended.

using PndTools.IO.Extensions;

using var stream = File.OpenRead("game.pnd");
var xml = stream.GetPxml();

Console.WriteLine(xml);

Throws InvalidPndException if the stream does not contain valid PXML.

Parse PXML into typed objects

Combine GetPxml with PxmlParser to get strongly-typed metadata without writing a temp file.

using PndTools;
using PndTools.IO.Extensions;

using var stream = File.OpenRead("game.pnd");
var xmlString = stream.GetPxml();
var parser = new PxmlParser();
var pxml = parser.Parse(xmlString);

Console.WriteLine(pxml.Applications[0].Id);

Save PXML to a file

SavePxml writes the PXML directly to a path.

using var stream = File.OpenRead("game.pnd");
stream.SavePxml("/tmp/PXML.xml");

Read the embedded icon

GetIcon returns the raw PNG bytes of the icon appended to the end of the PND file.

using var stream = File.OpenRead("game.pnd");
var png = stream.GetIcon();

File.WriteAllBytes("/tmp/icon.png", png);

Throws InvalidPndException if the stream does not contain an embedded icon.

Save the icon to a file

SaveIcon combines the read and write into a single call.

using var stream = File.OpenRead("game.pnd");
stream.SaveIcon("/tmp/icon.png");

Detect the archive type

DetectArchiveType reads the magic bytes at the start of the stream and returns a PndArchiveType value without opening the archive.

using var stream = File.OpenRead("game.pnd");
var archiveType = stream.DetectArchiveType();

Console.WriteLine(archiveType); // SquashFs or Iso

Returns PndArchiveType.Unknown if the stream is too short or does not match either format.

Async variants

Every method on PndStreamExtensions has an async counterpart — GetPxmlAsync, GetIconAsync, SavePxmlAsync, SaveIconAsync, and DetectArchiveTypeAsync — each accepting an optional CancellationToken. See the async and await guide for usage examples and guidance on when to prefer the async API.