Automatically generate C# wrapper class from dll in Visual Studio 2010 Express?

c# dll wrapper visual-studio-express
mre picture mre · Jul 26, 2012 · Viewed 33k times · Source

I was told by a colleague of mine that Visual Studio allows one to point to a .dll and auto-magically generate a C# wrapper class. Is this really possible? And if so, how does one go about achieving this? I've browsed the web, but have failed to come up with anything!

Thanks all!

Figured I'd share these resources as well,

Answer

Darin Dimitrov picture Darin Dimitrov · Jul 30, 2012

3 cases:

  1. The DLL represents a managed assembly => you directly reference it in your project and use it
  2. The DLL represents a COM object => you could use the tlbimp.exe utility to generate a managed wrapper
  3. The DLL represents an unmanaged library with some exported functions. That's the toughest one. There are no tools. You will have to consult the documentation of the library to know the exported function names and parameters and build managed P/Invoke wrappers. You could use the dumpbin.exe utility to see a list of exported functions. Here's an article on MSDN about the different steps.

Related questions

Creating simple c++.net wrapper. Step-by-step

I've a c++ project. I admit that I'm a complete ZERO in c++. But still I need to write a c++.net wrapper so I could work with an unmanaged c++ library using it. So what I have: 1) unmanaged project's …

Read More
Embedding DLLs in a compiled executable

Is it possible to embed a pre-existing DLL into a compiled C# executable (so that you only have one file to distribute)? If it is possible, how would one go about doing it? Normally, I'm cool with just leaving the …

Read More
Unable to load DLL (Module could not be found HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

I have dll library with unmanaged C++ API code I need to use in my .NET 4.0 application. But every method i try to load my dll i get an error: Unable to load DLL 'MyOwn.dll': The specified module could …

Read More