Good site for anyone who needs to call Win32 functions

[John Lokanis]

Here is a site that Brian Tyler (formerly of NI, now at MS) recommended for all LV Dev who need to call Win32 functions:

http://www.pinvoke.net/

This site is a Wiki for how to use pinvoke from .NET to call the Win32 APIs. This is also a good ref for those of you who dapple in C#.

hope this helps someone...

-John

[crelf]

This site is a Wiki for how to use pinvoke from .NET to call the Win32 APIs. This is also a good ref for those of you who dapple in C#.

I like the site - thanks for posting the link. Is there anything there that isn't on msdn.com? Although I like that it's a wiki...

[John Lokanis]

I think what it mainly give you are c# wrappers for Win32 calls that you can use to build a simple .NET assembly that you can then call from LV easily.

[crelf]

I think what it mainly give you are c# wrappers for Win32 calls that you can use to build a simple .NET assembly that you can then call from LV easily.

Ahhh - I see the point now. Nice!

[Daklu]

I think what it mainly give you are c# wrappers for Win32 calls that you can use to build a simple .NET assembly that you can then call from LV easily.

Rats, I missed the user group meeting.

For calling Win32 functions, isn't it generally easier to just use the Call By Ref node? Admittedly I haven't paid that much attention to the issue, but from the discussions I remember wrapping dll calls in another dll is only needed when using callbacks. What other benefits do you get?

[John Lokanis]

I think Brian's point was that the pinvoke method wraps up all the error handling, mem alloc and threading issues into a nice .net interface. Not sure as I have not used it yet and I am sure I will learn more as I do. I have called some Win32 stuff in the past and it can be non-trivial if you don't know what you are doing.

Edited March 25, 2010 by John Lokanis

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

I think Brian's point was that the pinvoke method wraps up all the error handling, mem alloc and threading issues into a nice .net interface. Not sure as I have not used it yet and I am sure I will learn more as I do. I have called some Win32 stuff in the past and it can be non-trivial if you don't know what you are doing.

.Net Pinvoke may spare you a few mistakes, but I'm sure that if you do not know what you are doing you are still into a lot of trouble. Likely you will get an .Net Exception dialog instead of the Win32 Exception dialog if you mess up pointers but that are minor details.