Call a dll from Python

Letting VS2015 make a dll called SomeDLL for me with these implementations

// SomeDll.cpp : 
// Defines the exported functions for the DLL application.
//

#include "stdafx.h"
#include "SomeDll.h"


// This is an example of an exported variable
SOMEDLL_API int nSomeDll=0;

// This is an example of an exported function.
SOMEDLL_API int fnSomeDll(void)
{
    return 42;
}

// This is the constructor of a class that has been exported.
// see SomeDll.h for the class definition
CSomeDll::CSomeDll()
{
    return;
}
 
I then make a python script, using ctypes and loading the dll, using os to find it:

import os
import ctypes

os.chdir("C:\\Users\\sbkg525\\src\\SomeDll\\Debug")
SomeDll = ctypes.WinDLL("SomeDll.dll")

I can either use attributes of the library or use protoypes. I tried protoypes first.The function returns an int and takes no parameters:

proto = ctypes.WINFUNCTYPE(ctypes.c_int)
params = ()

answer = proto(("fnSomeDll", SomeDll), params)

Unfortunately this says

AttributeError: function 'fnSomeDll' not found

because C++ is name mangled. extern "C" FTW another time; for now

link.exe /dump /exports Debug\SomeDll.dll

          1    0 0001114F ??0CSomeDll@@QAE@XZ =
                  @ILT+330(??0CSomeDll@@QAE@XZ)
          2    1 00011244 ??4CSomeDll@@QAEAAV0@$$QAV0@@Z =
                  @ILT+575(??4CSomeDll@@QAEAAV0@$$QAV0@@Z)
          3    2 0001100A ??4CSomeDll@@QAEAAV0@ABV0@@Z =
                  @ILT+5(??4CSomeDll@@QAEAAV0@ABV0@@Z)
          4    3 0001111D ?fnSomeDll@@YAHXZ =
                  @ILT+280(?fnSomeDll@@YAHXZ)
          5    4 00018138 ?nSomeDll@@3HA =
                  ?nSomeDll@@3HA (int nSomeDll)

Looks like we want 4;

answer = proto(("?fnSomeDll@@YAHXZ", SomeDll), params)

print answer
>>> <WinFunctionType object at 0x0248A7B0>


Of course. It's a function. Let's call the function

print answer()
>>> 42

Done. I'll try attributes next. And functions which take parameters. Later, I'll look at other calling conventions.

First, the docs says, "foreign functions can be accessed as attributes of loaded shared libraries.
Given

extern "C"
{
    SOMEDLL_API void hello_world()
    {
        //now way of telling this has worked
    }
}

we call it like this

lib = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('SomeDll.dll')
lib.hello_world()

It seems to assume a return type of int. For example,

extern "C"
{
    SOMEDLL_API double some_number()
    {
        return 1.01;
    }
}

called as follows

lib = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('SomeDll.dll')
lib.hello_world()
val = lib.some_number()
print val, type(val)
Gives

-858993460, <type 'int'>


We need to specify the return type, since it's not an int:



lib.some_number.restype = ctypes.c_double
val = lib.some_number()
print val, type(val)

then we get what we want

1.01 <type 'float'>

We need to do likewise for parameters

extern "C"
{
    SOMEDLL_API double add_numbers(double x, double y)
    {
        return x + y;
    }
}

If we just try to call it with some floats we get an error

    total = lib.add_numbers(10.5, 25.7)
ctypes.ArgumentError: argument 1: <type 'exceptions.TypeError'>: Don't know how to convert parameter 1

Stating the parameter type fixes this

lib.add_numbers.restype = ctypes.c_double
lib.add_numbers.argtypes = [ctypes.c_double, ctypes.c_double]
total = lib.add_numbers(10.5, 25.7)
print total, type(total)

36.2 <type 'float'>

Just one starter thought on strings. Returning a const char * seems to give a str in python

SOMEDLL_API const char * speak()
{
    return "Hello";
} 

called like this



lib.speak.restype = ctypes.c_char_p
print lib.speak()

says "Hello"; using parameters as strings and particularly as refrences that can be changed needs some investigation.

Does a similar approach using attributes of the loaded library work for non-extern "C" functions? Can I use the proto approach on the extern "C" functions?

Let's see...