I'm writing a native wrapper around a managed component written in C++\CLI.
I have the following function in managed code:
array<Byte>^ Class::Function();
I want to expose this function from a native C++ class with the following signature:
shared_array<unsigned char> Class::Function();
I've gotten as far as calling the managed function from native code, but I'm not sure how to safely copy the managed array into an unmanaged one.
gcroot<cli::array<System::Byte>^> managedArray = _managedObject->Function();
There are two usual approaches:
Perform the marshaling with native code, which requires use of pin_ptr<>
:
boost::shared_array<unsigned char> convert(array<unsigned char>^ arr)
{
boost::shared_array<unsigned char> dest(new unsigned char[arr->Length]);
pin_ptr<unsigned char> pinned = &arr[0];
unsigned char* src = pinned;
std::copy(src, src + arr->Length, dest.get());
return dest;
}
Perform the marshaling with managed code, which requires use of the Marshal class:
boost::shared_array<unsigned char> convert(array<unsigned char>^ arr)
{
using System::Runtime::InteropServices::Marshal;
boost::shared_array<unsigned char> dest(new unsigned char[arr->Length]);
Marshal::Copy(arr, 0, IntPtr(dest.get()), arr->Length);
return dest;
}
Generally I would prefer the latter approach, as the former can hinder the GC's effectiveness if the array is large.
Take a look at pin_ptr
, it lets you pass address of a managed class to an unmanaged function.