I've got damn big problem. As you know Lua allows making modules and you can load these modules with require() function from 5.1(previously loadlib).
#define LUA extern "C" __declspec(dllexport) int __cdecl
static int l_TestFunc(lua_State * L)
{
lua_pushboolean (L, 1); // return true
return 1;
}
LUA luaopen_MyModule(lua_State *L)
{
printf("test2");
lua_pushcfunction(L, l_TestFunc);
lua_setglobal(L, "TestFunc");
return 1;
}
so in Lua you are just using require("MyModule") and everything works.(luaopen_* is entry point then)
But I need to use standard way(DllMain as entry point). I tried but it didn't work.
Got any ideas?
But I need to use standard way(DllMain as entry point). I tried but it didn't work. Got any ideas?
DllMain is always going to be your entry point (if defined), but you can't use it to load your functions because you have no Lua state to load them into there.
When you run "require" in Lua code, the app executing that code (e.g. lua.exe) will load your DLL (invoking DllMain), then call luaopen_MyModule passing in the Lua state that executed the require statement. There's no way for your DllMain to have access to that state pointer...
...well, no ordinary way. You could work something out so that the host apps writes the memory location of the Lua state to some external location accessible to your DLL (registry, file, etc.) before loading your DLL. Your DLLMain could fetch the pointer register and it's functions into that state. Not sure why you'd want to do that, but in a language like C it's technically possible.
This would require that you wrote the host, so you could arrange to write the state somewhere. Or you could have a separate module, loaded the ordinary way, which writes the Lua_state value, then all other modules could access it from their DllMains.
This smells a lot like an XY Problem. Care to share why you want to register your functions in DllMain?
Try this...
Instead of using the name MyModule in require("MyModule") and luaopen_MyModule use the name of the executable that your DLL is injected into. If that doesn't work change the require call to have .exe at the end.
Lua's require is going to call Win32 LoadLibrary and then GetProcAddress to find the luaopen function. Both calls will use the argument to require(). It appears that PE-inject makes all the functions in the injected DLL appear as if they are in the EXE module. So, you need LoadLibrary to return the handle to the EXE module and then GetProcAddress will find the injected luaopen function.
The are a few reasons this might not work. One is that Lua's require does have the requirement that the DLL file name and the DLL module name match. That's not a Win32 requirement and so might not be the case for your portable executable.
Related
I need to load a DLL file in Lua to connect different APIs. I know that C type dlls can be loaded, but what I have is a dll file produced in C++.
The code (in C++) that produced this library was of the form:
// MyAPI.h
namespace MyAPI
{
public class MyFirstClass
{
public:
MyFirstClass();
void performSomeMethod(int arg);
}
}
which then produced the dll file MyAPI.dll. When I now try to import this in Lua, using:
require "MyAPI"
it immediately gives the error: error loading module 'MyAPI' from file '.\MyAPI.dll': The specified procedure could not be found. I do not understand what this means, or how to get rid of it. Can C++ libraries in general not be included by Lua (i.e. should I write another C wrapper?) or is there a way to do this?
Yes, it can be done. Expose a C-function loader luaopen_MyAPI, where you can call a function that uses any kind of C++ Lua Wrapper, such as LuaBridge, LuaBind or others. If your calls in C++ don't conform to the rules of the bindings, such as lifetime management, passing objects by value, etc, you might need to wrap the classes into bindable classes.
For an example see pugilua
pugilua_lib.h - module loader API
pugilua_lib.cpp - wrapper classes and a LuaBridge binding
pugilua.cpp - calling the bindings from the module loader
You need to export a C function named luaopen_ MyAPI that follows the C-Lua API. The rest of the code can be C++.
My understanding is that you will need to have a C wrapper with a C entry point rather than a C++ entry point. C++ does name mangling so it can change dynamically depending on the compiler as well as the method signature, etc.
Here is Anatomy of a Lua to C Call which you may find helpful.
Also see this stack overflow discussion on what goes on with dll loading.
And here is another stack overflow discussion on require and dll loading.
This is a brief post on the name mangling problem.
I have a DLL given named Lib.ddl. In the dll i have a function named add that takes an integer as a parameter.
Using the windows API and by using the following class.
class WindoswAPI
{
public:
WindowsAPI();//constructor
//helper functions
~WindowsAPI();
private:
}
How do I load this library in the constructor of the class. Extract the function via helper functions, and unload the function in the destructor?
I have looked on the internet for solutions and help but i cant find any.
You should first look at LoadLibraryEx() in order to load the dll in your process, then you can use GetProcAddress() to obtain a pointer to a function by name. Note the HMODULE parameter requested from the second function is returned by the first. You have to carefully know the function signature to invoke it without causing GPFs, so don't be surprised if you have to do some debug before having it working.
First easy thing to check anyway are the return values of both functions: the first one should return something different from zero ( it actually returns the virtual address where the dll is loaded ), if it returns NULL, use GetLastError to have some hints.
The same for GetProcAddress, if it return zero something didn't work, and usually is the incorrect spelling of the function name. As I said before having back an address from GetProcAddress does not guarantee you have finished: you must know perfectly how to call the function. If you need help in discovering which name are exposed from the dll, you will find useful DUMPBIN.EXE, you should have it already available from the Visual Studio Tools command prompt.
When your code finish with the dll, you can try to unload it by using FreeLibrary().
Look at POCO C++ Libraries, it contains very nice crossplatfrom DLL-Loader to avoid hand-written workarounds and boilerplate.
I am developing an application that needs to read in several file formats and merge the data. Because we may want to support additional formats in the future, the file readers have to be developed as DLLs, and loaded at runtime based on user input. I will normally be loading two DLLs at a time.
I was thinking that I could create an Abstract Interface (Like this), but if I use a factory function in each of my (subclassed) DLL classes, when I load two DLLs, the two function definitions will interfere with each other. Am I missing something? Is there a better way to do this?
Thanks!
(upgraded from comment)
If you load the DLLs with LoadLibrary you get a handle to the DLL - which you must later use in FreeLibrary to unload the DLL!
After acquiring the handle you can call GetProcAddress to get a pointer to the function.
sample code:
auto library = LoadLibrary("sample.dll");
//test if library is null => error handling
auto func = GetProcAddress(library, "function");
//test if func is null => error handling
//you may need to cast func to a different function pointer
auto plugin = func();
//after use:
auto result = FreeLibrary(library);
//test for error
As I already mentioned in the comment: NEVER EVER RELEASE MEMORY ALLOCATED IN A DLL FROM ANOTHER CONTEXT (other DLL or the EXE)!
We have an application written in C/C++ which is broken into a single EXE and multiple DLLs. Each of these DLLs makes use of the same static library (utilities.lib).
Any global variable in the utility static library will actually have multiple instances at runtime within the application. There will be one copy of the global variable per module (ie DLL or EXE) that utilities.lib has been linked into.
(This is all known and good, but it's worth going over some background on how static libraries behave in the context of DLLs.)
Now my question.. We want to change utilities.lib so that it becomes a DLL. It is becoming very large and complex, and we wish to distribute it in DLL form instead of .lib form. The problem is that for this one application we wish to preserve the current behaviour that each application DLL has it's own copy of the global variables within the utilities library. How would you go about doing this? Actually we don't need this for all the global variables, only some; but it wouldn't matter if we got it for all.
Our thoughts:
There aren't many global variables within the library that we care about, we could wrap each of them with an accessor that does some funky trick of trying to figure out which DLL is calling it. Presumably we can walk up the call stack and fish out the HMODULE for each function until we find one that isn't utilities.dll. Then we could return a different version depending on the calling DLL.
We could mandate that callers set a particular global variable (maybe also thread local) prior to calling any function in utilities.dll. The utilities DLL could then use this global variable value to determine the calling context.
We could find some way of loading utilities.dll multiple times at runtime. Perhaps we'd need to make multiple renamed copies at build time, so that each application DLL can have it's own copy of the utilities DLL. This negates some of the advantages of using a DLL in the first place, but there are other applications for which this "static library" style behaviour isn't needed and which would still benefit from utilities.lib becoming utilities.dll.
You are probably best off simply having utilities.dll export additional functions to allocate and deallocate a structure that contains the variables, and then have each of your other worker DLLs call those functions at runtime when needed, such as in the DLL_ATTACH_PROCESS and DLL_DETACH_PROCESS stages of DllEntryPoint(). That way, each DLL gets its own local copy of the variables, and can pass the structure back to utilities.dll functions as an additional parameter.
The alternative is to simply declare the individual variables locally inside each worker DLL directly, and then pass them into utilities.dll as input/output parameters when needed.
Either way, do not have utilities.dll try to figure out context information on its own. It won't work very well.
If I were doing this, I'd factor out all stateful global variables - I would export a COM object or a simple C++ class that contains all the necessary state, and each DLL export would become a method on your class.
Answers to your specific questions:
You can't reliably do a stack trace like that - due to optimizations like tail call optimization or FPO you cannot determine who called you in all cases. You'll find that your program will work in debug, work mostly in release but crash occasionally.
I think you'll find this difficult to manage, and it also puts a demand that your library can't be reentrant with other modules in your process - for instance, if you support callbacks or events into other modules.
This is possible, but you've completely negated the point of using DLL's. Rather than renaming, you could copy into distinct directories and load via full path.
Sooooo I'm writing a script interpreter. And basically, I want some classes and functions stored in a DLL, but I want the DLL to look for functions within the programs that are linking to it, like,
program dll
----------------------------------------------------
send code to dll-----> parse code
|
v
code contains a function,
that isn't contained in the DLL
|
list of functions in <------/
program
|
v
corresponding function,
user-defined in the
program--process the
passed argument here
|
\--------------> return value sent back
to the parsing function
I was wondering basically, how do I compile a DLL with gcc? Well, I'm using a windows port of gcc. Once I compile a .dll containing my classes and functions, how do I link to it with my program? How do I use the classes and functions in the DLL? Can the DLL call functions from the program linking to it? If I make a class { ... } object; in the DLL, then when the DLL is loaded by the program, will object be available to the program? Thanks in advance, I really need to know how to work with DLLs in C++ before I can continue with this project.
"Can you add more detail as to why you want the DLL to call functions in the main program?"
I thought the diagram sort of explained it... the program using the DLL passes a piece of code to the DLL, which parses the code, and if function calls are found in said code then corresponding functions within the DLL are called... for example, if I passed "a = sqrt(100)" then the DLL parser function would find the function call to sqrt(), and within the DLL would be a corresponding sqrt() function which would calculate the square root of the argument passed to it, and then it would take the return value from that function and put it into variable a... just like any other program, but if a corresponding handler for the sqrt() function isn't found within the DLL (there would be a list of natively supported functions) then it would call a similar function which would reside within the program using the DLL to see if there are any user-defined functions by that name.
So, say you loaded the DLL into the program giving your program the ability to interpret scripts of this particular language, the program could call the DLLs to process single lines of code or hand it filenames of scripts to process... but if you want to add a command into the script which suits the purpose of your program, you could say set a boolean value in the DLL telling it that you are adding functions to its language and then create a function in your code which would list the functions you are adding (the DLL would call it with the name of the function it wants, if that function is a user-defined one contained within your code, the function would call the corresponding function with the argument passed to it by the DLL, the return the return value of the user-defined function back to the DLL, and if it didn't exist, it would return an error code or NULL or something). I'm starting to see that I'll have to find another way around this to make the function calls go one way only
This link explains how to do it in a basic way.
In a big picture view, when you make a dll, you are making a library which is loaded at runtime. It contains a number of symbols which are exported. These symbols are typically references to methods or functions, plus compiler/linker goo.
When you normally build a static library, there is a minimum of goo and the linker pulls in the code it needs and repackages it for you in your executable.
In a dll, you actually get two end products (three really- just wait): a dll and a stub library. The stub is a static library that looks exactly like your regular static library, except that instead of executing your code, each stub is typically a jump instruction to a common routine. The common routine loads your dll, gets the address of the routine that you want to call, then patches up the original jump instruction to go there so when you call it again, you end up in your dll.
The third end product is usually a header file that tells you all about the data types in your library.
So your steps are: create your headers and code, build a dll, build a stub library from the headers/code/some list of exported functions. End code will link to the stub library which will load up the dll and fix up the jump table.
Compiler/linker goo includes things like making sure the runtime libraries are where they're needed, making sure that static constructors are executed, making sure that static destructors are registered for later execution, etc, etc, etc.
Now as to your main problem: how do I write extensible code in a dll? There are a number of possible ways - a typical way is to define a pure abstract class (aka interface) that defines a behavior and either pass that in to a processing routine or to create a routine for registering interfaces to do work, then the processing routine asks the registrar for an object to handle a piece of work for it.
On the detail of what you plan to solve, perhaps you should look at an extendible parser like lua instead of building your own.
To your more specific focus.
A DLL is (typically?) meant to be complete in and of itself, or explicitly know what other libraries to use to complete itself.
What I mean by that is, you cannot have a method implicitly provided by the calling application to complete the DLLs functionality.
You could however make part of your API the provision of methods from a calling app, thus making the DLL fully contained and the passing of knowledge explicit.
How do I use the classes and functions in the DLL?
Include the headers in your code, when the module (exe or another dll) is linked the dlls are checked for completness.
Can the DLL call functions from the program linking to it?
Yes, but it has to be told about them at run time.
If I make a class { ... } object; in the DLL, then when the DLL is loaded by the program, will object be available to the program?
Yes it will be available, however there are some restrictions you need to be aware about. Such as in the area of memory management it is important to either:
Link all modules sharing memory with the same memory management dll (typically c runtime)
Ensure that the memory is allocated and dealloccated only in the same module.
allocate on the stack
Examples!
Here is a basic idea of passing functions to the dll, however in your case may not be most helpfull as you need to know up front what other functions you want provided.
// parser.h
struct functions {
void *fred (int );
};
parse( string, functions );
// program.cpp
parse( "a = sqrt(); fred(a);", functions );
What you need is a way of registering functions(and their details with the dll.)
The bigger problem here is the details bit. But skipping over that you might do something like wxWidgets does with class registration. When method_fred is contructed by your app it will call the constructor and register with the dll through usage off methodInfo. Parser can lookup methodInfo for methods available.
// parser.h
class method_base { };
class methodInfo {
static void register(factory);
static map<string,factory> m_methods;
}
// program.cpp
class method_fred : public method_base {
static method* factory(string args);
static methodInfo _methoinfo;
}
methodInfo method_fred::_methoinfo("fred",method_fred::factory);
This sounds like a job for data structures.
Create a struct containing your keywords and the function associated with each one.
struct keyword {
const char *keyword;
int (*f)(int arg);
};
struct keyword keywords[max_keywords] = {
"db_connect", &db_connect,
}
Then write a function in your DLL that you pass the address of this array to:
plugin_register(keywords);
Then inside the DLL it can do:
keywords[0].f = &plugin_db_connect;
With this method, the code to handle script keywords remains in the main program while the DLL manipulates the data structures to get its own functions called.
Taking it to C++, make the struct a class instead that contains a std::vector or std::map or whatever of keywords and some functions to manipulate them.
Winrawr, before you go on, read this first:
Any improvements on the GCC/Windows DLLs/C++ STL front?
Basically, you may run into problems when passing STL strings around your DLLs, and you may also have trouble with exceptions flying across DLL boundaries, although it's not something I have experienced (yet).
You could always load the dll at runtime with load library