how to use C dll headers library in c#

Question

Hello ; I am very new to C#, and i am trying to use a help package for my project. The package is written in c and has 1) /bin/ several .dll files 2) /include/ has a header file 3) /lib/msvc/ .lib file my question is how can i use those files in my C# WPF project? i know there is no "#include" in C#, and the .dll can not be imported by adding to the project's reference. so how can i do it in C#?

Thanks

Answer 1

You need to add a series of C# Platform Invocation method definitions. This tells C# how to call into the .dll, and use the C API directly.

The header and library files are completely unused.

Answer 2

You need to use pInvoke

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa288468%28VS.71%29.aspx

Answer 3

You might find managed C++ useful. You can write a managed C++ library that uses the header files and the .lib directly, and wraps them with a set of .NET classes to be used by C#.

Answer 4

Just adding to the answers, you may want to take a look in this blog post. It has a link to a Visual Studio addin that can generate P/Invoke signatures from your headers.

Best

Answer 5

There are a lot of ways to do this "interop" - I once did a talk called "head spinning interop". The key is the structure of your native DLL. Since you say it's in C, the chances are it's in perfect shape to be used with PInvoke, which works best with C functions or C-style functions in C++. The other answers have excellent pointers to the syntax and some help to get your function (and the parameters it takes) declared on the C# side.

The other two main options are a C++/CLI wrapper, a good choice when the functions take a lot of complicated types, or COM, which would almost certainly require you to change the native code so is not a good fit in this situation.