Loading unmanaged dll and get the methods inside it

Question

4.00/5 (2 votes)

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Hi folks,

I want to load an unmanaged dll and get the method names inside the dll.
I have used reflection to do for managed dll.But not able to get it right for unmanaged code

Assembly asm = Assembly.LoadFrom(path);

Type[] mu = asm.GetTypes();

foreach (Type typeInfo in mu)
{
  MethodInfo[] mi = typeInfo.GetMethods();

  
  }

Please help
Regards,
Rajesh

Posted 13-Jul-11 3:21am

explorerC

Updated 13-Jul-11 3:43am

v3

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4 solutions

Solution 4

To extend Shameel's answer:

COM components come with a type library, which describes the public interface that the component exposes. This is what the C# interop uses to build cover classes for COM, and it looks like you can use TypeLibConverter.ConvertTypeLibToAssembly[^] to create a .Net Assembly which you can then reflect on in the normal way.

OCXs/ActiveX controls are COM components with a graphical representation and the same game should work for them.

In general, though, unmanaged DLLs are not self describing, and it is therefore not possible to get full reflection information on them. You should be able to get a list of functions (check the Windows API to see if it has a method for it), but you won't be able to find parameters or return types because they are not specified anywhere.

Posted 13-Jul-11 3:57am

BobJanova

Comments

explorerC 13-Jul-11 10:03am

Bob,

Jus want to find the method names ,no parameters and return types
The dll is written in 'C' Language

BobJanova 13-Jul-11 10:39am

With quick search I didn't find anything trivial. You can find the list within the DLL file in the .edata section. Have a look at the PE file format (used for .exe and .dll on Windows). I wrote some code to find this section a long time ago but I don't think I have it any more.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-Jul-11 17:22pm

Good, my 5. As far as I remember, a type library does not have to be embedded in the COM executable module, but it can be. See also my comment to the answer by Shameel.
--SA

Solution 5

You can use the dumpbin and undname utilities as described here[^] to get the information (although not programmatically). Note that you need to use the /EXPORTS option to get the names from a DLL.

Posted 14-Jul-11 0:45am

Richard MacCutchan

Solution 1

Ever heard of PInvoke[^]

Posted 13-Jul-11 3:30am

Manas Bhardwaj

Comments

explorerC 13-Jul-11 9:32am

Yeah i heard of it .......I want to get the type information of dll .Methods names possibly
I guess PInvoke doesn't do that???

[no name] 13-Jul-11 9:33am

PInvoke is for calling methods in native DLLs. The question pertains to using Reflection on unmanaged DLLs.

Manas Bhardwaj 13-Jul-11 9:39am

hold on, aren't unmanaged/native dlls are same?
And the question is not about using reflection, but calling the methods within unmanaged dll.
If you agree, you should (re)consider you vote.

BobJanova 13-Jul-11 9:59am

The question appears to be about an equivalent to reflection to me.

[no name] 13-Jul-11 12:13pm

question is about reflection. btw, thanks for downvoting all my answers.

Manas Bhardwaj 14-Jul-11 1:29am

Buddy,
I am not that a**hole usually, but yesterday was a bad day. Will correct them.

Ashamed and apologies!

[no name] 14-Jul-11 3:41am

it's okay, but next time you decide to downvote any answer/post (of any CP user, not just mine), it would be nice to put a comment or post explaining the reason behind your decision to downvote. Also, explain what was the right approach or alternative.

explorerC 13-Jul-11 9:45am

questions was getting the type information of the assembly(methods names)

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Shameel · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-13T03:36:00

Solution 2

When it comes to managed DLL (assembly), you can use your code sample that uses Reflection to get the list of Types, methods, etc. Unfortunately in the unmanaged world, it is not so easy. There are various kinds of unmanaged DLLs like COM DLLs (also called ActiveX), native DLLs (Win32 API), etc. There is no standard equivalent for Reflection in unmanaged DLLs.

Posted 13-Jul-11 3:36am

Shameel

Comments

explorerC 13-Jul-11 9:41am

thanks for the info...........

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-Jul-11 17:20pm

I don't think your answer is down-voted right now. I voted 5.
I must add that it is possible to "reflect" plain unmanaged DLL the the extent where you see all the exported names (by reading the PE structure of the module as binary dump utilities do). If the names are mangled, one can draw a conclusion of parameters but this is a already quite unreliable.
--SA

[no name] 14-Jul-11 0:28am

yes, it is possible to some extent, what I meant was that there is no standard way of achieving this across all unmanaged DLLs. If COM DLLs have an embedded type library, you can use it to "reflect" the DLL. On the other hand, reflecting native DLLs is quite difficult, but there should be some tools to let you do that too.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 19-Jul-11 17:48pm

Sure, we agree on that.
--SA