Creating C DLLs for use with C#

To me, creating a DLL in C and then accessing it from C# (for example, when we need more performance or to use less memory) has always seemed like a rather daunting task. This week, I decided to give it a go and found it to be surprisingly straightforward.

Creating a C DLL

We shall start with nearly the simplest thing we could possibly imagine in C:

__declspec(dllexport) int Add(int a, int b)
{
    return a + b;
}

The __declspec(dllexport) says export this function in the DLL.

The following compiles test.c into test.dll (making sure to use the Developer Command Prompt or call vcvarsall.bat before starting):

> cl /Za /LD test.c

Note the /Za flag makes sure you are working in strict C (rather than C++). Without it, you would need to add some code to avoid name mangling:

extern "C"
{
    __declspec(dllexport) int Add(int a, int b)
    {
        return a + b;
    }
}

If you prefer to be more precise, you can do the following:

> cl /Wall /WX /O2 /Za /LD test.c

This adds all of the warnings you could possibly ever want (/Wall /WX) and optimises the code (/O2).

Accessing the C DLL functions from C#

To access the function from C# (assuming that the DLL is in the current path, such as the same folder as the C# exe):

[DllImport("test.dll")]
private static extern int Add(int a, int b);

This can then be used as a normal C# method. For example (testing using NUnit):

[Test]
public void TestAdd()
{
    Assert.AreEqual(42, Add(13, 29));
}

The process gets slightly more complicated for strings, structs and pointers to things but that’s a story for another day.