Once a data file is open in ASN1VE, it can be edited in various ways.
Tree View
To edit a particular element, first the Tree View must be showing the Element View. For this, an ASN.1 schema must be assigned. Expand the tree to expose the element to be edited. Right-clicking on the element will bring up a context menu with varying options for the selected element.
For repeating elements (such as elements of a SEQUENCE OF) and top-level nodes (representing a complete message or record), options Insert before and Insert after will create a new, empty element of the same type before or after the selected element. The Copy element and Paste element options can be used to copy the contents of one element and then paste this data into a new element. The Delete option will delete the currently selected element.
For Open (ANY) type elements, the Decode as... option allows a type to be selected for the current element. Once a type is selected, the element will be re-decoded as if it were the selected type. Note that this does not actually change the encoded message. To replace an Open type element with another, see the type-specific element editor for Open type elements.
Detail View
Clicking on an element in the Tree View will cause the Detail View to show a type-specific editor for the element. For details about specific type editors, see Element editors.
XML and JSON Tabs
Data can be directly edited in the XML and JSON tabs. A schema must be assigned and the data must be valid with respect to the schema. As soon as the editing is started, an "OK" and "Cancel" button will appear within the display. To accept the edits, press "OK". To revert to the original text, click "Cancel".
Hex Tab
Message data can also be edited directly via the
Hex tab in the Document View.
Clicking on a byte highlights it, and entering hexadecimal characters, two
for each byte, inserts the new byte before the selected one. To overwrite
the current byte instead of inserting before it, click the
button in the lower right-hand corner to change it to
. Once editing is complete, clicking the
OK button in the Hex tab will
reload the message in the Tree View.
Note that attempting to edit hex data directly can be problematic if the message contains embedded lengths upstream from the location where the editing is being done. These will not be updated automatically if hex contents are changed in the editor, so a user can very easily make a message invalid by trying to edit it this way. It is better to use one of the other methods except for the simplest cases>
Encode Menu
Finally, message data can also be re-encoded using a different set of ASN.1 encoding rules. To do this, select from the Encode menu the encoding rule set to re-encode as.