Re: binary AndroidManifest.xml, resource ID to string. How to ?

On 6/4/2024 6:31 AM, R.Wieser wrote:

Hello all,
 I wanted to convert a binary "AndroidManifest.xml" to text again, and
curently have a readable result.
 One thing I've not been able to figure out though.  In a sourcefile I see
lines like
 android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"
android:label="@string/app_name"
android:roundIcon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"
android:theme="@style/Translucent">
 , but all that the binary XML file contains is resource-IDs
 icon = @:7F0E0000
label = @:7F110065
roundIcon = @:7F0E0000
theme = @:7F120157
 , and I have no idea how to translate the latter to the former. :-\
 I've done my dues and spend time searching the Web, but have not been able
to find any kind of clue to how to do it (the information I found stopped
short of explaining it).
 If anyone knows how to do it or has an URL to a website explaining it I
would be obliged.
 

   Just a wild guess, but in PE files there's generally
a resource table to store icons. The table is located
through a system of numeric pointers. You read the
file header, locate the resource table pointer, go to
that offset, walk the table pointers, etc. It's all about
pointers to offsets.
   So one thing you could check is whether some rendering
of 7F0E0000 as an offset in the file points to either icon
bytes, an icon path string, or another pointer. But you'd
also need to figure out 7F0E0000. Is it a little endian long
integer? Is it two short integers? Does the 7F mean
something else? It looks to me like those numbers may
have sections and not just represent whole numbers.
   This kind of thing can be monstrously difficult because
most people have no reason to care about such things.
So you have to track down some kind of industry spec
doc. It's like the PE file structure. There are docs that explain
it, but for the most part it's not relevant to people using
computers. And without the decoder guide it's just gibberish
bytes.