.NET Resources Structure Viewer

A VS Code extension for inspecting the binary structure of .NET .resources files.

These are the files compiled from .resx (you'll find them under obj/), or produced by resgen, ResourceWriter, or PreserializedResourceWriter. Open any *.resources file and the viewer appears in place of the text editor.

Highlights

• No .NET required. The extension parses the binary format itself and never calls into the .NET runtime.
• Safe by design. Nothing is deserialized, so even BinaryFormatter payloads are inspected without being executed.
• Live reload. The view refreshes automatically when the file changes on disk (for example, after a rebuild).

Installation

Search for .NET Resources Structure Viewer in the VS Code Extensions view, or run:

code --install-extension vtzy137.dotnet-resources-viewer

Usage

1. Open any *.resources file. The viewer opens automatically.
2. To open a file with a different extension, right-click it in the Explorer (or use the Command Palette) and run .NET Resources: Open with .NET Resources Viewer.
3. To see the raw file instead, click Open as text in the viewer, or right-click the editor tab → Reopen Editor With... → Text Editor.

Features

The viewer is organized into five tabs.

Overview

File size, resource count, user type count, format version (V1/V2), reader type, data section offset, and a name hash check.

Resources

A table of every resource with its name, type, size, offset, and value.

• Filter by name or value, filter by type, sort by column, and navigate with the ↑/↓ keys.
• Select a resource to see its details:
  • Type code, name record and data record offsets.
  • The hash stored in the file compared with a freshly computed hash.
  • The full value.
• Image preview for PNG, BMP, GIF, JPEG, ICO, CUR, WebP, and SVG. Works for byte[] / Stream resources and for System.Drawing.Bitmap / Icon serialized with BinaryFormatter.
• BinaryFormatter (MS-NRBF) payload analysis: class name, assembly, and member list.
• Hex dump of the data record and name record.
• Copy and export: copy the name or value, or export the value, image, or raw record to a file.

Headers

Every field of the ResourceManager header and the RuntimeResourceSet header, with its offset.

Types

The file's type table, plus resource counts per type.

Layout

A map of every region in the file (header, type table, padding, hashes, positions, name section, data section). Click a region to view its hex.

Supported formats

The .resources file format

For reference, this is the layout the viewer decodes:

ResourceManager header
  Int32  MagicNumber          0xBEEFCACE
  Int32  ResMgrHeaderVersion  1
  Int32  NumBytesToSkip
  String ReaderType           System.Resources.ResourceReader, mscorlib, ...
  String ResourceSetType      System.Resources.RuntimeResourceSet
RuntimeResourceSet header
  Int32  Version              1 | 2
  Int32  NumResources         N
  Int32  NumTypes             M
  String TypeNames[M]
  byte   Padding[0..7]        "PAD" up to a multiple of 8
  Int32  NameHashes[N]        FastResourceComparer.HashFunction, sorted ascending
  Int32  NamePositions[N]     relative to the Name section
  Int32  DataSectionOffset    absolute offset
Name section  (N records)
  7-bit  ByteLength
  UTF-16LE Name
  Int32  DataOffset           relative to the Data section
Data section
  7-bit  TypeCode (V2) | TypeIndex (V1)
  ...    Value

Strings use the BinaryWriter.Write(string) encoding: a 7-bit encoded byte length followed by UTF-8 bytes.

Contributing

Build from source

npm install
npm run package          # produces dotnet-resources-viewer.vsix
code --install-extension dotnet-resources-viewer.vsix

You can also install the .vsix from VS Code: Extensions → ... → Install from VSIX...

To debug, open this folder in VS Code and press F5.

Run the tests

The test suite compares the parser's output against the real .NET ResourceReader, so it requires the .NET SDK:

dotnet run --project test/generator -- test/fixtures
npm test

License

MIT