Calling C++ from Objective-C

Question

For those of you who have successfully been able to call C++ code from Objective-C, will you please enlighten me?

This link says you need to wrap your C++ code using a technique he describes in his article. It looks good but I still have problems.

This link says that as long as the Objective-C class calling the C++ class has been converted to a .mm (Objective-C++) class then the two should work nicely together.

Each of these approaches are causing me grief the minute I try to add a method call. Can somebody please give me code for a simple Hello World iOS app that uses Objective-C for the "Hello" part and a C++ class for the "World" part with an Objective-C++ class in the middle? Or do I still have the entire concept wrong?

Answer 1

Essentially you need an ObjC class with .mm extension that calls an ObjC class with .mm extension. The second one will be used as a C++ wrapper class. The wrapper class will call your actual .cpp class. It's a little tricky, so I'm going to give you some verbose code. Here is an overview of the project:

In your ObjC code (ViewController) you would call the CplusplusMMClass

- (IBAction)buttonPushed:(UIButton *)sender {
    self.mmclass = [[CplusplusMMClass alloc]init];  // bad practice; but showing code
    NSString *str = [self.mmclass fetchStringFromCplusplus];
    [self populateLabel:str];
}

Here is the CplusplusMMClass .h and .mm

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import "WrapperClass.h"

@interface CplusplusMMClass : NSObject
@end

@interface CplusplusMMClass()
@property (nonatomic, strong) WrapperClass *wrapper;
- (NSString*)fetchStringFromCplusplus;
@end

---

#import "CplusplusMMClass.h"
#import "WrapperClass.h"

@implementation CplusplusMMClass

- (NSString*)fetchStringFromCplusplus {
    self.wrapper = [[WrapperClass alloc] init];
    NSString * result = [self.wrapper getHelloString];
    return result;
}

@end

Here is WrapperClass .h and .mm

#ifndef HEADERFILE_H
#define HEADERFILE_H

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

#if __cplusplus

#include "PureCplusplusClass.h"

@interface WrapperClass : NSObject
@end

@interface WrapperClass ()
- (NSString *)getHelloString;
@end


#endif
#endif

---

#import "WrapperClass.h"

#include "WrapperClass.h"
#include "PureCplusplusClass.h"

using namespace test;

@interface WrapperClass ()
@property (nonatomic) HelloTest helloTest;
@end

@implementation WrapperClass

- (NSString *)getHelloString {
    self.helloTest = *(new HelloTest);
    std::string str = self.helloTest.getHelloString();
    NSString* result = [[NSString alloc] initWithUTF8String:str.c_str()];
    return result;
}

@end

Here is the PureCplusplusClass .h and .cpp

#ifndef __HelloWorld__PureCplusplusClass__
#define __HelloWorld__PureCplusplusClass__

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

namespace test {
    class HelloTest
    {
    public:
        std::string getHelloString();
    };
}

#endif /* defined(__HelloWorld__PureCplusplusClass__) */

---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string>

std::string test::HelloTest::getHelloString() {
    std::string outString = "Hello World";
    return outString;
}

This code is not perfect! I'm having trouble with the namespace test being recognized. I'll update when I can.

But this should get you there!!!!