Using a third party DLL

[John Dann]

I'd like to talk to a (serial port linked) external instrument from
within a .Net project. The makers supply a Win32 compatible DLL
(written in C and not an ActiveX DLL I think) that handles the low
level communication to and from the instrument. So by using the
available DLL, hopefully I can achieve what I need to. Trouble is that
I'm not familiar with working with third party DLLs from within .Net.
But I have documentation summarising the behaviour of the DLL so
fingers crossed it won't be too difficult.

I know that no-one here can advise me in detail on using this
particular DLL, but is it possible to offer any generic guidance on
how to get this going or maybe suggest any web links that might deal
with this topic in outline?

Many thanks if anyone can help.
John Dann

 

[Philip Rieck]

What you're looking for is called P/Invoke (P for "Platform").

(The information below may be c#/vb.net mixed. In fact, most of the
documentation/samples on PInvoke I've found is in c#)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/03/07/NET/default.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...s/cssample/html/vcsamPlatformInvokeSample.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/10/netserialcomm/

http://www.codeguru.com/net_general/PInvoke.html

http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2002/02/18/cominterop.html

 

[Jay B. Harlow [MVP - Outlook]]

John,
In addition to Philip's links.

If you don't have it you may want to consider purchasing ".NET and COM - The
Complete Interoperability Guide" by Adam Nathan from MS Press. He has a
couple of sections on getting unmanaged Win32 APIs and C DLL calls to work
with .NET.

Hope this helps
Jay

 

[ÓñÁúѩɽ]

DLL is just a file extention, what is inside the file really matters.Can u
tell me if the DLL u mentioned is a COM Component ?

If that is a COM component, u can transform it into a .NET compatible class
using a command line tool.

VB.NET is good in all aspect, except on using old Com components, since on
..NET, COM is obsolete.

Barry