calling managed c# functions from unmanaged c++

Question

How to call managed c# functions from unmanaged c++

Answer 1

I used COM interop first, but by now I switched to IJW (it just works), as it is a lot simpler. I have a wrapper C++/CLR DLL (compile with /clr).

A simple example (using statics to make the calls easier):

namespace MyClasses       
{
    public class MyClass
    {
        public static void DoSomething()
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Hello World");
        }
    }
}

In the DLL I can reference namespaces as follows:

using namespace MyClasses;

And call it:

__declspec(dllexport) void CallManagedCode()
{
    MyClass::DoSomething();
}

Now you have an unmanaged DLL export "CallManagedCode" which calls into the managed code.

Of course, you also have to convert data between the managed/unmanaged boundary. Starting with VS2008, Microsoft includes a marshal-helper for converting between unmanaged and managed types. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb384865.aspx