How do I pass and retrieve memory stream from my Application to/from DLL?

Question

Suppose I have a TMemoryStream I need to pass to my DLL and get back TMemoryStream (Bitmap stream) from the DLL.

I was thinking my DLL would ha

Answer 1

A slightly different approach is to wrap each memory stream up as a IStream, and pass around the resulting interface references. So, from the DLL's side:

uses
  System.SysUtils, System.Classes, Vcl.AxCtrls;

procedure DoProcess(InStream, OutStream: TStream);
begin
  //...do the actual processing here
end;

//wrapper export
procedure Process(AInStream: IStream; out AOutStream: IStream); safecall;
var
  InStream, OutStream: TStream;
begin
  InStream := TOleStream.Create(AInStream);
  try
    OutStream := TMemoryStream.Create;
    try
      DoProcess(InStream, OutStream);
      AOutStream := TStreamAdapter.Create(OutStream, soOwned);
    except
      OutStream.Free;
      raise;
    end;
  finally
    InStream.Free;
  end;
end;

Personally I like using safecall as well because it's an easy way to be exception-safe, but I guess that's a matter of taste.

Edit

A variant of the above is to have the caller provide both the stream to read and a stream to write to:

//wrapper export
procedure Process(AInStream, AOutStream: IStream); safecall;
var
  InStream, OutStream: TStream;
begin
  InStream := TOleStream.Create(AInStream);
  try
    OutStream := TOleStream.Create(AOutStream);
    try
      DoProcess(InStream, OutStream);
    finally
      OutStream.Free;
    end;
  finally
    InStream.Free;
  end;
end;

The EXE side might then look something like this:

//wrapper import
type
  TDLLProcessProc = procedure(AInStream, AOutStream: IStream); safecall;

procedure Process(AInStream, AOutStream: TStream);
var
  InStream, OutStream: IStream;
  DLLProc: TDLLProcessProc;
  Module: HMODULE;
begin
  InStream := TStreamAdapter.Create(AInStream, soReference);
  OutStream := TStreamAdapter.Create(AOutStream, soReference);
  Module := LoadLibrary(MySuperLib);
  if Module = 0 then RaiseLastOSError;
  try
    DLLProc := GetProcAddress(Module, 'Process');
    if @DLLProc = nil then RaiseLastOSError;
    DLLProc(InStream, OutStream);
  finally
    FreeLibrary(Module);
  end;
end;