sbedecoder is a simple python package for parsing SBE encoded data.

sbedecoder dynamically generates a SBE parser from an xml description of the format. This is accomplished by creating an instance of SBESchema() and calling it's parse() method with a file name:

from sbedecoder import SBESchema
schema = SBESchema()
schema.parse('path/to/schema.xml')

A message parser based on this schema is created by first creating an instance of a SBEMessageFactory() and then creating an instance of SBEParser() using the SBEMessageFactory():

from sbedecoder import SBEMessageFactory
from sbedecoder import SBEParser

message_factory = SBEMessageFactory(schema)
message_parser = SBEParser(message_factory)

Messages are parsed from any structure that looks like a buffer containing the raw binary data (buffer, str, bytearay, etc):

for message in message_parser.parse(data, offset=offset):
    process(message)

A parsed message is represented as an instance of the SBEMessage() class. SBEMessages are comprised of zero or more sbedecoder.message.SBEField() instances and zero or more sbedecoder.message.SBERepeatingGroup() instances. An SBEField() object can be one of a primitive TypeMessageField(), a SetMessageField() or an EnumMessageField()

For more information on SBE, see: http://www.fixtradingcommunity.org/pg/structure/tech-specs/simple-binary-encoding.

python setup.py install

Note: on Windows, we typically use the Anaconda python distribution. Anaconda does not distribute python's test code. If you have issues with dpkt (ImportError: No module named test), you can either install the latest dpkt from source (https://github.com/kbandla/dpkt) or just comment out the import (from test import pystone) in ..\Anaconda\lib\site-packages\dpkt\decorators.py.
Newer versions of dpkt no longer have this dependency.

mdp_decoder.py serves as an example of using the sbedecoder package. It is a full decoder for processing CME Group MDP 3.0 (MDP3) messages from a pcap file. For help with using mdp_decoder.py:

mdp_decoder.py --help

An SBE template for CME Group MDP 3.0 market data can be found at ftp://ftp.cmegroup.com/SBEFix/Production/Templates/templates_FixBinary.xml

Example, output:

:packet - timestamp: 2015-06-25 09:45:01.924492 sequence_number: 93696727 sending_time: 1435243501924423666 
::MDIncrementalRefreshVolume -  transact_time: 1435243501923350056 match_event_indicator: LastVolumeMsg (2)
:::no_md_entries - num_groups: 1
::::md_entry_size: 4483 security_id: 559884 rpt_seq: 2666379 md_update_action: New (0) md_entry_type: e 
::MDIncrementalRefreshBook -  transact_time: 1435243501923350056 match_event_indicator: LastQuoteMsg (4)
:::no_md_entries - num_groups: 2
::::md_entry_px: 18792.0 ({'mantissa': 187920000000, 'exponent': -7}) md_entry_size: 1 security_id: 559884 rpt_seq: 2666380 number_of_orders: 1 md_price_level: 1 md_update_action: Delete (2) md_entry_type: Bid (0) 
::::md_entry_px: 18746.0 ({'mantissa': 187460000000, 'exponent': -7}) md_entry_size: 6 security_id: 559884 rpt_seq: 2666381 number_of_orders: 1 md_price_level: 10 md_update_action: New (0) md_entry_type: Bid (0) 

mdp_book_builder.py serves as an example of using the sbedecoder package to build limit orderbooks for a given contract.

For help with using mdp_book_builder.py:

mdp_book_builder.py --help

sbedecoder itself isn't optimized for performance however it can be adequate for simple backtesting scenarios amd post trade analytics. Due to the amount of printing done by mdp_decoder.py, it can be quite slow to parse large pcap files.

For improved performance (4 to 5x), sbedecoder will run under PyPy. Assuming your pypy install is in /opt:

/opt/pypy/bin/pip install lxml
/opt/pypy/bin/pip install dpkt
/opt/pypy/bin/pypy setup.py install

A SBE class generator script is available to generate a python file that contains the class definitions that match those that are created dynamically via the SBESchema.parse method.

For help with using sbe_class_generator.py:

sbe_class_generator.py --help

An usage would be (from the generator directory):

/sbe_class_generator.py --schema schema.xml --output generated.py --template ./sbe_message.tmpl

This command will output a file called generated.py containing the class definitions that were dynamically created while parsing the 'schema.xml' file. The template file used to generated the classes is contained in sbe_message.tmpl.

The generated.py file can simply be used for examining the class construction, or it can replace the contents of the generated.py file in the sbedecoder core project. By replacing the generated.py file in the sbedecoder package, a developer will get access to the class definitions in the IDE.

In order to make use of the standard parser functionality using the generated code one should use the SBESchema.load method instead of the parse method.

An example of how to do this is below and is contained in the mdp_book_builder.py script:

try:
    from sbedecoder.generated import __messages__ as generated_messages
    mdp_schema.load(generated_messages)
except:
    mdp_schema.parse(args.schema)