Possible to call C++ code from C#?
I'm not familiar with the library you mentioned, but in general there are a couple ways to do so:
- P/Invoke to exported library functions
- Adding a reference to the COM type library (in case you're dealing with COM objects).
One easy way to call into C++ is to create a wrapper assembly in C++/CLI. In C++/CLI you can call into unmanaged code as if you were writing native code, but you can call into C++/CLI code from C# as if it were written in C#. The language was basically designed with interop into existing libraries as its "killer app".
For example - compile this with the /clr switch
#include "NativeType.h"
public ref class ManagedType
{
NativeType* NativePtr;
public:
ManagedType() : NativePtr(new NativeType()) {}
~ManagedType() { delete NativePtr; }
void ManagedMethod()
{ NativePtr->NativeMethod(); }
};
Then in C#, add a reference to your ManagedType assembly, and use it like so:
ManagedType mt = new ManagedType();
mt.ManagedMethod();
Check out this blog post for a more explained example.
P/Invoke is a nice technology, and it works fairly well, except for issues in loading the target DLL file. We've found that the best way to do things is to create a static library of native functions and link that into a Managed C++ (or C++/CLI) project that depends upon it.