PDML - Packet Description Markup Language

Wireshark can save network packet dissections in a PDML (Packet Description Markup Language) file. PDML conforms to the XML standard and contains details about the packet dissection.

Where can I get the official document about pdml file format?

Programs supporting this file type

Wireshark

How to create this file type

After you have loaded a capture file into Wireshark, choose File → Export Packet Dissections → as XML PDML and save the new file.

How to convert PDML to HTML

You can convert such a PDML file into HTML to view in a web browser. This is done with a XSLT (EXtensible Stylesheet Language) file called pdml2html.xsl. You find this file in the source code distribution of Wireshark and also in the install directory of Wireshark, typically /usr/share/wireshark/ on a Unix computer.

If you want to use the PDML file on a web server, all that is required is to place the pdml2html.xsl file in the same directory where the PDML file is located. The PDML file specifies the XSL file as a XML stylesheet and the web browser will automatically load the XSL file, apply the transformations to the PDML file and display the resulting HTML.

You can also convert the PDML file manually with a XSLT processor. On Unix computers you can use xsltproc from the libxslt library. Call it like: xsltproc pdml2html.xsl a.pdml > a.html

If you like to use the java XSLT processor saxon you can convert the file with a call like: java -jar saxon9he.jar -s:a.pdml -xsl:pdml2html.xsl -o:a.html

Example PDML file

cubic.pdml a sample PDML file showing a capture file of loading a web page.

External links

pdml2html.xsl in the Wireshark GIT repository.
http://cubic.org/~doj/pdml/cubic.pdml show HTML conversion of the example PDML file in your web browser.
README.xml-output also mentions Packet Summary Markup Language (PSML)
Using XML for Efficient and Modular Packet Processing
PDML Specification (Internet Archive)
Original commit Add the ability to print packet dissections in PDML (an XML-based format)
PSML added PSML output to the printing dialog

Discussion

#define PDML_VERSION "0"
#define PSML_VERSION "0"

Versions still at 0 in print.c. Have there been any changes that merit updating them?

Imported from https://wiki.wireshark.org/PDML on 2020-08-11 23:17:52 UTC