How to manipulate/return data with dynamically loaded functions (dlopen)?

Question

I've spent days reading and re-reading every tutorials I've found on the subject, and spent hours (and even days) browsing related questions here at SO, but I still can't get the following to work. Accept my apologies if this is a duplicate: chances are that I've seen and re-read many times the duplicate questions but couldn't understand the relevance of the answers to my problem. With that out of the way...

I'm trying to implement a plugin architecture for my Application. Plugins are compiled and installed as libraries. At run time, the Application then uses dlopen() / dlsym() to load and link to the plugin's functions.
The idea is that plugins (libraries) will implement a set of functions to return data to the main Application, or manipulate data passed from the Application.

In order to test this idea, I tried to implement a function (inside the plugin) that would return the (human readable) name of the plugin itself (as a std::string). I thought that would be something simple to start with.... :-/

Here is what I got so far:

// Plugin.cpp
extern "C" void plugin_name(std::string *name) {
        name = new std::string("Example plugin name");
}

// Application.cpp
void* handle = dlopen("libplugin.so", RTLD_LAZY);
typedef void (*plugin_t)(std::string*);
dlerror(); // Reset errors.
plugin_t call_plugin_name = (plugin_t) dlsym(handle, "plugin_name");
// ... Some error handling code.
std::string my_plugin_name;
call_plugin_name(&my_plugin_name);
dlclose(handle);
// More code that displays my_plugin_name.

I've tried many different combinations, including one that seemed more straigtforward (but didn't work any better) where the plugin name is returned:

// Plugin.cpp
extern "C" std::string plugin_name(void) {
        return std::string("Example plugin name");
}

I know I'm close: the code compiles and the Application stopped crashing ;)
However, I've got an empty space where I'd expect seeing the actual plugin name.

All the tutorials I've read so far go very quickly over the mechanism by which data is passed both ways: plugin <=> Application. What I'm trying to do with a "simple" std::string, I wish to do later with much more complex objects (i.e. a plugin function would take an object by reference and change some of its properties). The tutorials more or less all stop at the point of creating a pointer with dlsym() and do not give much examples on how to use this pointer.

So, how to do all that?

Another pertinent question: do I use a common header that I'd use both with the Application and with the plugin and where I'd define the function calls signature? How would I do this and how would that help?

Answer 1

The signature of a function is generated from its name and argument types (return value type doesn't matter). When you declare function with extern "C", C symbol naming scheme is used which apparently can't handle C++ types like std::string. That's why passing std::string as an arguments doesn't work.

I can't explain why returning std::string doesn't work. Maybe different calling conventions are used.

Anyway the correct way of importing C++ code from a shared library is to return pointers to C++ types from entry points. And this entry points have to have arguments with types available in C. (Entry point is a documented function exported from a shared library)

Here is a good article on basic aspects of loading C++ classes from shared libraries. This article will answer your question throughly.

Please note that there are pitfalls when using exceptions thrown from a shared library to the main applications. And with dynamic_cast of objects created inside a library. I've mentioned this topics so that you could be somewhat prepared when you face this problems.

[edit]

To make my answer more clear I'll add a couple of examples.

To get the plugin name you can use:

extern "C" const char * plugin_name() {
    return "Example plugin name";
}

// main.cc:
void* handle = dlopen("libplugin.so", RTLD_LAZY);
// ...
typedef const char * (*plugin_t)();
plugin_t call_plugin_name = (plugin_t) dlsym(handle, "plugin_name");
// ...
std::string my_plugin_name(call_plugin_name());
// use it

To really use the plugin functionality you should declare a base class in a header:

// plugin.h
class Plugin {
    public:
        virtual void doStuff() = 0;
        virtual ~Plugin() = 0;
};

// plugin.cc
Plugin::~Plugin() {
}

// myplugin.cc
class MyPlugin : public Plugin {
    virtual void doStuff() {
        std::cout << "Hello from plugin" << std::endl;
    }
};

extern "C" Plugin *createMyPluginInstance() {
    return new MyPlugin;
}

Answer 2

Try:

 extern "C" void plugin_name(std::string **name) {
     *name = new std::string("Example plugin name");
 }

 ...

 std::string *my_plugin_name;
 call_plugin_name(&my_plugin_name);

As you are assigning a copy of the pointer you passed as the argument, not the one you intended to assign.

EDIT Here you go: File main.cpp

#include <iostream>
#include <dlfcn.h>
#include <string>

// Application.cpp
int main() {
    void* handle = dlopen("libplugin.so", RTLD_LAZY);
    typedef void (*plugin_t)(std::string**);
    dlerror(); // Reset errors.
    plugin_t call_plugin_name = (plugin_t) dlsym(handle, "plugin_name");
    // ... Some error handling code.
    std::string *my_plugin_name;
    call_plugin_name(&my_plugin_name);
    dlclose(handle);
    // More code that displays my_plugin_name.
    std::cout << "Plugin name is " << *my_plugin_name << std::endl;
    delete my_plugin_name;
    return 0;
}

File plugin.cpp

#include <string>

extern "C" void plugin_name(std::string **name) {
    *name = new std::string("example plugin name");
}

Just a word of warning. Although this compiles and runs, passing C++ types across the dll boundry is risky and the above code is just your code fixed enough to compile and run, it is not safe and has very explicit memory handling. You may want to attack the problem in a different way.

Answer 3

Please have a read of this question and its answers. There are many opportunities for incompatibilities across the shared lib boundaries in C++.