I have a DLL non .net and unmanaged written in Borland C++ that I need to import. It returns void and has the identifier __stdcall on the function. It also requires passing of char *. When I try to add it as a reference to my project in VS 2005, it returns an error of not valid assembly.
How can I do this in C#?
This what I currently have and it does not work:
[DllImport ("Project1.dll", CallingConvention=CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern IntPtr CustomerForm
(String caption);
For an unmanaged DLL you do not add it as a reference. Make sure the binary DLL is located in the same folder as the build where the .NET EXE project resides in usually {project}\bin\debug.
Also, make sure that you had a .DEF file for the exports when you built the unmanaged DLL with Borland C++.
Edit:
LIBRARY Project1
EXPORTS
CustomerForm
And in your Borland C++ source make sure that the function is declared as export, for an example:
#ifdef __cplusplus
__declspec(dllexport) void CustomerForm(char *s);
#endif
Using this will ensure that the function is exportable and can be linked!
Make sure the signature of your DllImport attribute matches up to the signature of your native C++ Dll i.e.
[DllImport ("Project1.dll", CallingConvention=CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern void CustomerForm(string caption);
Hope this helps,
Best regards,
Tom.
To use DllImport, you don't need to add a reference of the dll, just put the dll beside your executable or in system32 and it should work.