Dynamically loading classes from DLLs

Have you ever wondered whether there is a way to have an application extrinsically load a DLL (e.g. via the LoadLibrary() function) which exports classes so that the loader of the DLL can then use objects of the class ?

This is basically no problem, the only thing that makes this a pain in the [censored] are the 'C++ mangled names' of the methods in the DLL's export section (e.g. '?CreateObject@CFrameDoc@@SGPAVCObject@@XZ'). The simple trick get around this (and not using (D)COM) is: If you have (e.g.) a class called CMyClass, declare it in the header file common to both application and DLL:

#include ...

#ifdef _DLL // assume this is defined when we build the DLL
#define _DYNLINK __declspec( dllexport)
#else
#define _DYNLINK __declspec( dllimport)
#endif

class _DYNLINK CMyClass
{ 
public:
            CMyClass ();
    virtual ~CMyClass();

    void    DoSomethingUseful(); 
};

then, export a function from the DLL that returns a pointer to an instance of CMyClass, let's call it 'CreateMyClass()' - it basically should do 'return ( new CMyClass());'

#ifndef _DLL
typedef CMyClass* ( *PFNCREATEMYCLASS)();
#else
_DYNLINK CMyClass* CreateMyClass() 
{ 
	return ( new CMyClass());
}
#endif

Also provide a function from the DLL that performs a 'delete' on the object. Let's call it 'DeleteMyClass()' - it basically should do 'delete pObj;'. This function is necessary due to the fact that the CRT uses different heaps and therefore different allocators for EXEs/DLLs, so that you're just lucky if there's no crash...

#ifndef _DLL
typedef void ( *PFNDELETEMYCLASS)( CMyClass*);
#else
_DYNLINK void DeleteMyClass ( CMyClass* pObj) 
{ 
	delete pObj;
}
#endif

Last but not least, we need a way to get access to the objects methods without 'knowing' about the source code:

typedef void ( CMyClass::*PMYCLASSMETHOD)();
// the type created above ALWAYS points to a memer function of class 'CMyClass'
// which takes no arguments and returns nothing

#ifndef _DLL
typedef PMYCLASSMETHOD ( *PFNGETCLASSMETHOD)();
#else
_DYNLINK PMYCLASSMETHOD GetClassMethod () 
{ 
	return &CMyClass::DoSomethingUseful;
}
#endif

We also need a module definition file for our DLL. Remember: We use a C interface to our DLL! (the 'PRIVATE' keyword instructs the linker not to list the function in the DLL's import library).

   LIBRARY dynclass.dll
   EXPORTS
    CreateMyClass               @2 PRIVATE          ; object creation
    DeleteMyClass               @3 PRIVATE          ; object destruction
    GetClassMethod              @4 PRIVATE          ; method access

In your application, load the DLL and get a pointer to 'CreateMyClass()' (error checking omitted for brevity)

PFNCREATEMYCLASS	pfnCreateMyClass;
PFNDELETEMYCLASS	pfnDeleteMyClass;
PFNGETCLASSMETHOD	pfnGetClassMethod;
PMYCLASSMETHOD		pDoSomethingUseful;
CMyClass* pMyClass;

HANDLE hDll;

hDll = LoadLibrary ( ...);

pfnCreateMyClass  = (PFNCREATEMYCLASS)  GetProcAddress ( hDll, "CreateMyClass");
pfnDeleteMyClass  = (PFNDELETEMYCLASS)  GetProcAddress ( hDll, "DeleteMyClass");
pfnGetClassMethod = (PFNGETCLASSMETHOD) GetProcAddress ( hDll, "GetClassMethod");

// et voila - an instance of CMyClass!
  pMyClass = ( pfnCreateMyClass) ();

  pDoSomethingUseful = ( pfnGetClassMethod ());

  ( pMyClass->*pDoSomethingUseful) ();

  ( pfnDeleteMyClass ( pMyClass));

Outlook: This article just intends to demonstrate the technology 'how to do it'. There's much work to do if you want to use it in your applications, e.g. creating just one function in the DLL that fills in a structure which holds all the function pointers you need, or even a proxy class that does this automatically. Well, i'll keep this for a future update of this article.

Download demo project - 7KB