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I am reading a MSI file using python msilib library. My aim is to extract [Binary Data] from Binary table and dump into a file. (Using ORCA tool, we can extract the binary data by double clicking [Binary Data] cell and write to a file)

I could not find any msilib method to get binary data. It have method to get string data using Record.GetString(field). But as expected this is not working for [Binary Data] and give error.

Here is the code snippet

import msilib
# msi file path which is to be read
msiFilePath = "C:/msi/test.msi"
dbObj = msilib.OpenDatabase(msiFilePath, msilib.MSIDBOPEN_READONLY)
sqlQuery = "select * from Binary"
view = dbObj.OpenView(sqlQuery)
view.Execute(None)
cur_record = viewObj.Fetch()
# In Binary table; Column no 1 have string data and Column # 2 have [Binary Data]
cur_record.GetString(2)

And on execution :-

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#17>", line 1, in <module>
cur_record.GetString(2)
_msi.MSIError: unknown error 70c

Is there any way to do that ?

aberry
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1 Answers1

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msilib is not fully featured. Specifically, it can't read binary data.

Pygame hosts a more full featured and extensible (because it's written in Python with ctypes), msidb. It doesn't seem to be covered in the pygame docs, but the source code is pretty straightforward.

The MSI API you need is MsiRecordReadStream which pygame.msidb wraps in get_field_stream which is used by its Cursor class.

jimhark
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