GetProcAddress function in C++

Alireza picture Alireza · May 17, 2011 · Viewed 62.9k times · Source

Hello guys: I've loaded my DLL in my project but whenever I use the GetProcAddress function. it returns NULL! what should I do? I use this function ( double GetNumber(double x) ) in "MYDLL.dll"

Here is a code which I used:

typedef double (*LPGETNUMBER)(double Nbr);
HINSTANCE hDLL = NULL;
LPGETNUMBER lpGetNumber;
hDLL = LoadLibrary(L"MYDLL.DLL");
lpGetNumber = (LPGETNUMBER)GetProcAddress((HMODULE)hDLL, "GetNumber");

Answer

John Dibling picture John Dibling · May 17, 2011

Checking return codes and calling GetLastError() will set you free. You should be checking return codes twice here. You are actually checking return codes zero times.

hDLL = LoadLibrary(L"MYDLL.DLL");

Check hDLL. Is it NULL? If so, call GetLastError() to find out why. It may be as simple as "File Not Found".

lpGetNumber = (LPGETNUMBER)GetProcAddress((HMODULE)hDLL, "GetNumber");

If lpGetNumber is NULL, call GetLastError(). It will tell you why the proc address could not be found. There are a few likely scenarios:

  1. There is no exported function named GetNumber
  2. There is an exported function named GetNumber, but it is not marked extern "c", resulting in name mangling.
  3. hDLL isn't a valid library handle.

If it turns out to be #1 above, you need to export the functions by decorating the declaration with __declspec(dllexport) like this:

MyFile.h

__declspec(dllexport) int GetNumber();

If it turns out to be #2 above, you need to do this:

extern "C"
{
  __declspec(dllexport) int GetNumber();
};