Question

My question is what’s the best way to create an inteface with C++ code.

Basically so far I have a console project in c++, that works as I expect to, but I now want to make a GUI for it. The choices to me seemed to be:

1. Make a dll of the c++ project, and then make a C# form which uses the dll to do the logic.

2. Same as 1 except with VB.

3. Use QT or something eqvilent and make the inteface in the same project.

I’ve been trying option 1 for quite sometime. I made the library I believe successfully by making a library project in Visual Studio 2005. I then put it in my c# project but I then had a problem of being able to instantuate my class, but the c# project couldn’t see my methods.

The only fix I could find to this was to use the ref keyword. The problem with this was then not being able to mix managed and unmanaged code and trying this on one of the larger classes produced about 250 errors.

Option 2 i had the same problem with.

I’ll start option 3 if I have to, I just wondered if I was missing anything fundamental or any suggestions in general?

Cheers for reading.

Answer 1

You absolutely can use C++ code from C#, but if it’s unmanaged C++ code, you have to delve into the realm of pinvoke to call your code.

If you’re attempting to leverage an existing C++ library from .NET, one of the easiest ways to do this is by using C++/CLI as a wrapper around your unmanaged library. C++/CLI compiles into .NET bytecode, but features lots of automatic unmanaged interop. A phrase that’s often floated about when using C++/CLI unmanaged interop is “it just works”. It’s an accurate phrase.

Once you have a C++/CLI wrapper for your unmanaged code, C# should be able to see everything exposed by your C++/CLI library.