Ghidra Script Development

Ghidra provides built-in support for creating scripts using the Java language and add-on packages to support other scripting languages.

Creating Scripts in Java

In order to write a script in Java:

Your script class must extend ghidra.app.script.GhidraScript.

You must implement the run() method. This is where you insert your script-specific code.

Of course if you choose Java, the Ghidra script must be written in Java. An implementation for Python (based on Jython) is also provided.

Tips

Classes for performing file I/O are located in the java.io package.

To develop using the Eclipse IDE, instead of a simple text editor, install the developer add-on package. Next, install the GhidraDev plugin for Eclipse. If you don't already have Eclipse, you will need to install this separately. The GhidraDev extension is distributed in <GHIDRA_INSTALLATION>/Extensions/Eclipse/GhidraDev. Please see the README. This is highly recommended if you plan to do more than simple edits to scripts.

Meta-data

The scripting framework supports special meta-data comments. These comments are treated specially by the script manager.

Each line of meta-data should start with the scripting language comment character. For example, in Java line comments start with "//".

The first portion is the description.

The first line that starts with "@" terminates the description.

The available tags are listed below:

@author

This tag indicates the author of this script. It may include contact information.

@category

This tag indicates the category path for this script. Category levels are delimited using the "." character.

For example, "@category categoryA.categoryB".

@importpackage

This tag is used to declare inter-bundle dependencies as a comma separated list of Java packages. The complete syntax is that of the Import-Package attribute in an OSGi bundle manifest.

For example:

@importpackage org.my.script.library @importpackage org.my.script.library,org.your.script.library @importpackage org.apache.commons.collections.properties;version=4.4 @importpackage org.ghidra.analysis;version="[1.1,2)"

@keybinding

This tag indicates the default keybinding that will activate this script. If the Script Manager is unable to interpret the keybinding, it will be ignored. The format for the key binding is ["ctrl"] ["alt"] ["shift"] [A-Z,0-9,F1-F12]. The format string is not case-sensitive.

For example:

@keybinding ctrl shift H @keybinding ctrl alt shift F1 @keybinding L @keybinding ctrl shift COMMA

@menupath

This tag indicates the top-level menu path. Path levels are delimited using the "." character. A mnemonic can be defined by adding an ampersand ("&") in front of the mnemonic key. Ampersands can be escaped by adding another ampersand ("&&").

For example:

@menupath File.Run.My Script @menupath File.Run.My &Script @menupath File.Run.Me && My &Script

@toolbar

This tag indicates a top-level toolbar button should be created to launch this script and the image to use for the button. The Script Manager will attempt to locate the image in the Script Directories and then in the Ghidra installation. If the image does not exists, a toolbar button will be created using the default Ghidra image.

For example, "@toolbar myScriptImage.gif".

@runtime

This tag indicates which Ghidra script runtime environment is required to execute the script. It allows for greater control when more than one Ghidra script runtime environment uses the same script file extension. If left unspecified, the first Ghidra script runtime environment that matches the script's extension will be used.

For example, specify "@runtime Jython" if the script is targetted for a Jython 2 runtime environment rather than a Python 3 runtime environment.

Supporting Other Languages

The scripting framework can be extended to support scripts written in other languages.

In order to write scripts in other languages, you must extend ghidra.app.script.GhidraScriptProvider.

The methods that must be overridden are:

File createNewScript()

Creates a file containing a new template in the script language

String getCommentCharacter()

Returns the comment character used in the script language. For example, "//" or "#".

String getDescription()

Returns of description of the script language. For example, "JAVA" or "Python".

String getExtension()

Returns the file extension for script language. For example ".java" or ".py".

GhidraScript getScriptInstance(File sourceFile, PrintWriter writer)

Returns a new instance of the GhidraScript