I am writing code to perform the following steps;
Register a .net .dll and generate a .tlb using regasm.exe
Register a .net .dll and generate a .tlb using regasm.exe
Generate the IDL code from the typeLibrary and store it in a file.
Edit the IDL code making minor changes.
Recompile the IDL into a .tlb using Midl.exe.
The step I am stuck on, as I am sure you have guessed, is the generation of the IDL. I know this can be done manually by using the OleViewer that comes with the Windows API, however I would like to remove this manual step.
I cant seem to find anyway to operate the OleViewer via command line or find any other method of generating the IDL code.
Anybody got any ideas? I know the code to generate the IDL must be in the OleViewer somewhere... perhaps there is a way to access it?
Wine has an open source implementation of oleview
http://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/tree/HEAD:/programs/oleview
Perhaps you'd be able to use the idl enumeration functions in typelib.c
http://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/blob/HEAD:/programs/oleview/typelib.c
Related
I'm hoping I just missed something in the README somewhere, but...
I have a library of VB.net code that I'm trying to package into a PCL, ultimately for use under Xamarin. The code is relatively straightforward, there's a lot of File I/O using streams and some SQL client code, and a smaller amount of UI and control related code.
So I made a new PCL project, but I was confused what to select, so I chose Windows Store and .Net 4.5. I then Add...ed the source files from an existing project. Now I'm getting errors on the most basic things - ArrayList does not appear to exist in spite of importing System.Collections, and StackTrace doesn't exist in Diagnostics. Even simple things like StringFormat and SortedDictionary aren't there.
Did I skip a step somewhere? Perhaps I didn't download the right libs from MS? Or maybe I have to manually include a Reference to something? Any ideas?
I'm trying to interact with a .dll which will allow me to receive information from a variety of devices (Eye Gaze to be specific). The .dll is called ETUDriver and can be found at http://www.sis.uta.fi/~csolsp/projects.php however it does not come with an accompanying .h file.
I am struggling to actually load, interact and invoke functions from the .dll. A manual is supplied but it is of no help whatsoever with regards to actually setting up the code to start it off. There are three accompanying example apps (with source code) but only two of these work and one of which is in C# so is not helpful. The one that works however loads up the .dll via MFC and this is not a viable option with my code (which is intended to be used with many other projects and as such can't enforce MFC or any other libraries that are not as standard to projects).
Essentially, within the .dll is a series of classes which I need to create within my code and invoke the relevant functions of that class.
I've tried to use HRESULT hr = CoInitialize(NULL);
hr = CoCreateInstance(__uuidof(ETUDSink), NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, __uuidof(IETUDSink), (LPVOID*)&pETUDSink);
if(pETUDSink)
{
pETUDSink->Start();
} however it always returns an error saying that the class is not registered. I can't use MFC to call the relevant .rgs file and am completely stuck on how to get this to work otherwise.
Is there a given format to doing this that I am unaware of and has anyone had experience in using the ETUDriver (or is able to get it working in C++ without use of MFC)?
Thank you for any help you can provide on this subject :)
I am not familiar with the specific DLL in question, but it sounds like you did not register the DLL on the target machine. You can do this by running regsvr32.exe or by calling the DLL's exported DllRegisterServer function or by using side-by-side assemblies. You need to do register the DLL on each machine that needs to leverage the COM functionality within it, so when you distribute your application, make sure that your installer registers the DLL if you go the regsvr32.exe route.
You can use the #import directive in Microsoft Visual C++ to load the information contained within the DLL without using a header file or rewriting it yourself based on documentation.
I'm trying to create an D application which uses a (third party) COM .dll so I can scrape a text box of another application so I can sound an error when a certain string shows up.
However the third party doesn't provide .lib, .def or .h files that go with the dll (atleast with the free trial version). I can create the .lib file with the implib tool but I don't see any of the library's functions in the created .lib.
Their (visual c++) samples use the #import directive to link it in however that is of no use for me ...
On a side note how can I get the proper interfaces (in a .di with boilerplate that does the linking) of the dll automatically? I ask so the correctness of the linkage doesn't depend on my (likely to be incorrect) translation of the functions. They do have a webpage which gives all functions but the object model is a bit chaotic to say the least.
From what I know, COM libraries only expose a few functions, required to (un)register the library and to create objects.
You can however view the interfaces and functions in a COM .dll using the OLE/COM Object Viewer. It seems it might be able to output header files (.h). Afterwards, maybe you could use htod as a starting point to converting everything to D interfaces.
The DMD distribution seems to include a .COM sample (chello.d, dclient.d, dserver.d), and at first glance it doesn't look like it would require any LIBs explicitly.
Unfortunately, I've never actually used COM in D, so I can't advise any further. I hope this helps in some way.
While I have yet to actually do COM work myself, I am trying to revive Juno over on Github/he-the-great. Part of the project is tlbimpd which is what will output a D file from a DLL.
I've tested the examples and successfully run tlbimpd. Please do try things out for your use and submit any issues.
I disassemled a game's DLL and want to insert some code.
I need asm code to call another DLL in the current directory(I'm on Windows).
The background is, that I want to be able to execute custom code in my DLL,
but I can't load the DLL. So my idea was to load the DLL via modified game DLL.
There may be a function in the game which gives me the current directory path the DLL's are but I think I won't find it.
The calls you are looking for are LoadLibrary, which will search in a selection of places including the current directory for the DLL and then load it, then GetProcAddress.
If the DLL makes any other Win32 calls it is probably already linked against kernel32.dll, so that's all you need to do.
It is arguable as to whether modifying the DLL or using DLL injection is faster in terms of how long it takes to write the code since you're going to have to reverse engineer anyway, however, one advantage of pure DLL injection is that all existing code remains unmodified in terms of the installation, making these modifications easier to undo should the user wish to "unpatch" whatever you are doing.
Microsoft Detours comes with setdll.exe and withdll.exe, those utilities will let you start an exe with a custom dll file.
I have 2 .net dll's which I expose to COM using REGASM. In order to simplify referencing within a COM client I would like to make these into one file.
I have tried converting both files to IDL and then copying the contents of the Library section of one into the other and then compiling back to .tlb with MIDL. This works fine for the TypeDefs within the second IDL however it seems to fail when it comes to the interfaces I copied in. OLE/COM viewer can see the interface definitions but when I try and use the TLB via COM it cant find the interfaces that I copied in.
I wanted to make sure before I spend too much time on this, that it is actually possible to meagre IDL's in this way.
Could you use ILMerge to first combine the .NET assemblies and then use REGASM on the resulting assembly?
ILMerge is a utility for merging
multiple .NET assemblies into a single
.NET assembly. It works on executables
and DLLs alike and comes with several
options for controlling the processing
and format of the output.
I don't see an obvious way this would fail. You said you merged the library sections but you didn't say you copy-pasted the interface declarations from the other .idl. That would be an obvious, but unlikely, explanation.
One failure mode is when the client app uses the type library to marshal interface pointers across apartment boundaries or out-of-process. That however requires registry keys in HKCR\Interfaces. .NET doesn't create them, you'd have to do that yourself. You'd know if you did, not much of an explanation either.
Ok so it turns out that the issues I was experiencing were not related to merging the idl's.
If you wish to merge to idl's you can do so by simply copying the content of a library section in one idl into another. Then run midl on the merged file to turn it into a tlb.