C++ to C# char[] - visual-c++

Question

C# code:
class Hello{
public void helloWorld(char[] chars){
//do something
}
}
C++ code to call C#:
MyCSDLL::Hello* hello;
//init hello, some calls are ok.
char* myCharPtr;
//init with message
HRESULT result = hello->helloWorld(safeArray, (MyCSDLL::_MyRetVal) _retValPtr);
Adapting from How to create and initialize SAFEARRAY of doubles in C++ to pass to C#
void createSafeArray(SAFEARRAY** saData, char* charPtr)
{
char* iterator = charPtr;
SAFEARRAYBOUND Bound;
Bound.lLbound = 0;
Bound.cElements = 10;
*saData = SafeArrayCreate(VT_R8, 1, &Bound);
char HUGEP *pdFreq;
HRESULT hr = SafeArrayAccessData(*saData, (void HUGEP* FAR*)&pdFreq);
if (SUCCEEDED(hr))
{
do {
*pdFreq++ = *iterator;
} while (*iterator++);
}
}
How to call hello->helloWorld()? it is expecting SAFEARRAY*. The current code gives 80131538 error. How to fix it?
C++ Project is not CLR.

Answer 1

Let's suppose the C# code is this:
namespace ClassLibrary1
{
[ComVisible(true)]
[ClassInterface(ClassInterfaceType.AutoDual)]
public class Hello
{
public void helloWorld(char[] chars)
{
...
}
}
}
Then, you can call it with this C/C++ code, for example:
#import "C:\mycode\ClassLibrary1\bin\Debug\classlibrary1.tlb" raw_interfaces_only
using namespace ClassLibrary1;
HRESULT CallHello(wchar_t* charPtr, int count)
{
CComPtr<_Hello> p;
HRESULT hr = p.CoCreateInstance(__uuidof(Hello));
if (FAILED(hr))
return hr;
SAFEARRAY* psa = SafeArrayCreateVector(VT_UI2, 0, count);
if (!psa)
return E_OUTOFMEMORY;
LPVOID pdata;
hr = SafeArrayAccessData(psa, &pdata);
if (SUCCEEDED(hr))
{
CopyMemory(pdata, charPtr, count * 2); // count is the number of chars
SafeArrayUnaccessData(psa);
hr = p->helloWorld(psa);
}
SafeArrayDestroy(psa);
return hr;
}
.NET's char type is unicode, so the binary size is two bytes, the C equivalent is wchar_t (or unsigned short, etc...). So the safearray element type must match that, that's why I used VT_UI2 (VT_R8 that you used is Real of size 8 bytes, so it's equivalent to .NET's double type).
If you really want to use C's char, then you must do some kind of conversion to a 2-byte character.
Also, you can use the SafeArrayCreateVector function which directly allocates a 1-dimension safe array. Don't forget to call cleanup methods.