NativeObjects

Source-generator for easier native interop.

It provides two core features:

• Ability to consume COM-like native objects
• Ability to expose managed objects as COM-like native objects

Usage

Remember to enable unsafe on your project when referencing this source-generator

<PropertyGroup>
    <AllowUnsafeBlocks>true</AllowUnsafeBlocks>
</PropertyGroup>

Declare the interface you want to consume or expose, and decorate it with the [NativeObject] attribute:

[NativeObject]
public interface ICalculator
{
    int Add(int value1, int value2);
}

The order of the methods is used to build the vtable. Therefore you MUST declare the methods in your interface in the same order as the native object.

From there, you can consume a native object that implements this interface:

public int DoSomething(IntPtr nativePtr)
{
    var calc = NativeObjects.ICalculator.Wrap(nativePtr);

    return calc.Add(2, 3);
}

Or implement that interface then expose the managed object to native code:

public class MyCalculator : ICalculator
{
    public int Add(int value1, int value2)
    {
        return value1 + value2;
    }
}

var calculator = new MyCalculator();
using (var nativeCalculator = NativeObjects.ICalculator.Wrap(calculator))
{
    // nativeCalculator can be implicitly cast to IntPtr
    // This is equivalent to calling nativeCalculator.Object
    SomeNativeCode((IntPtr)nativeCalculator);
}

The generated objects have the same visibility as the interface. For instance, if the interface is declared as internal, the generated objects will be internal.

Namespace

By default, the interop types are emitted in the NativeObjects namespace. You can change it by adding an attribute at the assembly level:

[assembly: NativeObjectsNamespace("MyNamespace")]