How to: Marshal arrays using P/Invoke
You can call native functions that accept C-style strings by using the CLR string type String when using .NET Framework Platform Invoke (P/Invoke) support. We encourage you to use the C++ Interop features instead of P/Invoke when possible. P/Invoke provides little compile-time error reporting, isn't type-safe, and can be tedious to implement. If the unmanaged API is packaged as a DLL and the source code isn't available, P/Invoke is the only option. Otherwise, see Using C++ Interop (Implicit P/Invoke)).
Example
Because native and managed arrays are laid out differently in memory, passing them successfully across the managed/unmanaged boundary requires conversion, or marshaling. This article demonstrates how an array of simple (blitable) items can be passed to native functions from managed code.
As is true of managed/unmanaged data marshaling in general, the DllImportAttribute attribute is used to create a managed entry point for each native function that's used. In functions that take arrays as arguments, the MarshalAsAttribute attribute must be used to specify how to marshal the data. In the following example, the UnmanagedType enumeration is used to indicate that the managed array is marshaled as a C-style array.
The following code consists of an unmanaged and a managed module. The unmanaged module is a DLL that defines a function that accepts an array of integers. The second module is a managed command-line application that imports this function, but defines it in terms of a managed array. It uses the MarshalAsAttribute attribute to specify that the array should be converted to a native array when called.
// TraditionalDll4.cpp
// compile with: /LD /EHsc
#include <iostream>
#define TRADITIONALDLL_EXPORTS
#ifdef TRADITIONALDLL_EXPORTS
#define TRADITIONALDLL_API __declspec(dllexport)
#else
#define TRADITIONALDLL_API __declspec(dllimport)
#endif
extern "C" {
TRADITIONALDLL_API void TakesAnArray(int len, int[]);
}
void TakesAnArray(int len, int a[]) {
printf_s("[unmanaged]\n");
for (int i=0; i<len; i++)
printf("%d = %d\n", i, a[i]);
}
The managed module is compiled by using /clr.
// MarshalBlitArray.cpp
// compile with: /clr
using namespace System;
using namespace System::Runtime::InteropServices;
value struct TraditionalDLL {
[DllImport("TraditionalDLL4.dll")]
static public void TakesAnArray(
int len,[MarshalAs(UnmanagedType::LPArray)]array<int>^);
};
int main() {
array<int>^ b = gcnew array<int>(3);
b[0] = 11;
b[1] = 33;
b[2] = 55;
TraditionalDLL::TakesAnArray(3, b);
Console::WriteLine("[managed]");
for (int i=0; i<3; i++)
Console::WriteLine("{0} = {1}", i, b[i]);
}
No portion of the DLL is exposed to the managed code through the traditional #include directive. In fact, because the DLL is accessed at runtime only, problems in functions imported by using DllImportAttribute can't be detected at compile time.