Developing C wrapper API for Object-Oriented C++ code

I'm looking to develop a set of C APIs that will wrap around our existing C++ APIs to access our core logic (written in object-oriented C++). This will essentially be a glue API that allows our C++ logic to be usable by other languages. What are some good tutorials, books, or best-practices that introduce the concepts involved in wrapping C around object-oriented C++?

This is not too hard to do by hand, but will depend on the size of your interface. The cases where I've done it were to enable use of our C++ library from within pure C code, and thus SWIG was not much help. (Well maybe SWIG can be used to do this, but I'm no SWIG guru and it seemed non-trivial)

All we ended up doing was:

1. Every object is passed about in C an opaque handle.
2. Constructors and destructors are wrapped in pure functions
3. Member functions are pure functions.
4. Other builtins are mapped to C equivalents where possible.

So a class like this (C++ header)

class MyClass
{
  public:
  explicit MyClass( std::string & s );
  ~MyClass();
  int doSomething( int j );
}

Would map to a C interface like this (C header):

struct HMyClass; // An opaque type that we'll use as a handle
typedef struct HMyClass HMyClass;
HMyClass * myStruct_create( const char * s );
void myStruct_destroy( HMyClass * v );
int myStruct_doSomething( HMyClass * v, int i );

The implementation of the interface would look like this (C++ source)

#include "MyClass.h"

extern "C" 
{
  HMyClass * myStruct_create( const char * s )
  {
    return reinterpret_cast<HMyClass*>( new MyClass( s ) );
  }
  void myStruct_destroy( HMyClass * v )
  {
    delete reinterpret_cast<MyClass*>(v);
  }
  int myStruct_doSomething( HMyClass * v, int i )
  {
    return reinterpret_cast<MyClass*>(v)->doSomething(i);
  }
}

We derive our opaque handle from the original class to avoid needing any casting, and (This didn't seem to work with my current compiler). We have to make the handle a struct as C doesn't support classes.

So that gives us the basic C interface. If you want a more complete example showing one way that you can integrate exception handling, then you can try my code on github : https://gist.github.com/mikeando/5394166

The fun part is now ensuring that you get all the required C++ libraries linked into you larger library correctly. For gcc (or clang) that means just doing the final link stage using g++.

I think Michael Anderson's answer is on the right track but my approach would be different. You have to worry about one extra thing: Exceptions. Exceptions are not part of the C ABI so you cannot let Exceptions ever be thrown past the C++ code. So your header is going to look like this:

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C"
{
#endif
    void * myStruct_create( const char * s );
    void myStruct_destroy( void * v );
    int myStruct_doSomething( void * v, int i );
#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif

And your wrapper's .cpp file will look like this:

void * myStruct_create( const char * s ) {
    MyStruct * ms = NULL;
    try { /* The constructor for std::string may throw */
        ms = new MyStruct(s);
    } catch (...) {}
    return static_cast<void*>( ms );
}

void myStruct_destroy( void * v ) {
    MyStruct * ms = static_cast<MyStruct*>(v);
    delete ms;
}

int myStruct_doSomething( void * v, int i ) {
    MyStruct * ms = static_cast<MyStruct*>(v);
    int ret_value = -1; /* Assuming that a negative value means error */
    try {
        ret_value = ms->doSomething(i);
    } catch (...) {}
    return ret_value;
}

Even better: If you know that all you need as a single instance of MyStruct, don't take the risk of dealing with void pointers being passed to your API. Do something like this instead:

static MyStruct * _ms = NULL;

int myStruct_create( const char * s ) {
    int ret_value = -1; /* error */
    try { /* The constructor for std::string may throw */
        _ms = new MyStruct(s);
        ret_value = 0; /* success */
    } catch (...) {}
    return ret_value;
}

void myStruct_destroy() {
    if (_ms != NULL) {
        delete _ms;
    }
}

int myStruct_doSomething( int i ) {
    int ret_value = -1; /* Assuming that a negative value means error */
    if (_ms != NULL) {
        try {
            ret_value = _ms->doSomething(i);
        } catch (...) {}
    }
    return ret_value;
}

This API is a lot safer.

But, as Michael mentioned, linking may get pretty tricky.

Hope this helps

It is not hard to expose C++ code to C, just use the Facade design pattern

I am assuming your C++ code is built into a library, all you need to do is make one C module in your C++ library as a Facade to your library along with a pure C header file. The C module will call the relevant C++ functions

Once you do that your C applications and library will have full access to the C api you exposed.

for example, here is a sample Facade module

#include <libInterface.h>
#include <objectedOrientedCppStuff.h>

int doObjectOrientedStuff(int *arg1, int arg2, char *arg3) {
      Object obj = ObjectFactory->makeCppObj(arg3); // doing object oriented stuff here
      obj->doStuff(arg2);
      return obj->doMoreStuff(arg1);
   }

you then expose this C function as your API and you can use it freely as a C lib with out worrying about

// file name "libIntrface.h"
extern int doObjectOrientedStuff(int *, int, char*);

Obviously this is a contrived example but this is the easiest way to expos a C++ library to C

I would think you may be able to get some ideas on direction and/or possibly utilize directly SWIG. I would think that going over a few of the examples would at least give you an idea of what kinds of things to consider when wrapping one API into another. The exercise could be beneficial.

> SWIG is a software development tool that connects programs written in C and C++ with a variety of high-level programming languages. SWIG is used with different types of languages including common scripting languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl and Ruby. The list of supported languages also includes non-scripting languages such as C#, Common Lisp (CLISP, Allegro CL, CFFI, UFFI), Java, Lua, Modula-3, OCAML, Octave and R. Also several interpreted and compiled Scheme implementations (Guile, MzScheme, Chicken) are supported. SWIG is most commonly used to create high-level interpreted or compiled programming environments, user interfaces, and as a tool for testing and prototyping C/C++ software. SWIG can also export its parse tree in the form of XML and Lisp s-expressions. SWIG may be freely used, distributed, and modified for commercial and non-commercial use.

Just replace the concept of an object with a void * (often referred to as an opaque type in C oriented libraries) and reuse everything you know from C++.

I think using SWIG is the best answer... not only it avoid reinventing wheel but it is reliable and also promote a continuity in development rather than one shooting the problem.

High frequency problems need to be addressed by a long term solution.