Pinvoke DeviceIoControl parameters

Question

I\'m working on a C# project using DeviceIoControl. I\'ve consulted the related Pinvoke.net page for my signature:

[DllImport(\"Kernel32.dll\", SetLastError         


        

Answer 1

DeviceIoControl is quite unfriendly. But you can make it less painful, you don't have to marshal structures yourself. Two things you can take advantage of: C# supports method overloads and the pinvoke marshaller will believe you, even if you lie through you teeth about the declaration. Which is perfect for structures, they are already marshaled as a blob of bytes. Just what DeviceIoControl() needs.

So the general declaration would look like this:

[DllImport("Kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
public static extern bool DeviceIoControl(
    SafeFileHandle hDevice,
    int IoControlCode,
    byte[] InBuffer,
    int nInBufferSize,
    byte[] OutBuffer,
    int nOutBufferSize,
    out int pBytesReturned,
    IntPtr Overlapped
);

And you'd add an overload that's perfect for IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY, assuming you're interested in it returning a STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR:

[DllImport("Kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
public static extern bool DeviceIoControl(
    SafeFileHandle hDevice,
    EIOControlCode IoControlCode,
    ref STORAGE_PROPERTY_QUERY InBuffer,
    int nInBufferSize,
    out STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR OutBuffer,
    int nOutBufferSize,
    out int pBytesReturned,
    IntPtr Overlapped
);

And you'd call it like this:

var query = new STORAGE_PROPERTY_QUERY { PropertyId = 0, QueryType = 0 };
var qsize = Marshal.SizeOf(query);
STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR result;
var rsize = Marshal.SizeOf(result);
int written;
bool ok = DeviceIoControl(handle, EIOControlCode.QueryProperty, 
             ref query, qsize, out result, rsize, out written, IntPtr.Zero);
if (!ok) throw new Win32Exception();
if (written != rsize) throw new InvalidOperationException("Bad structure declaration");

Which ought to look prettier and a lot more diagnosable than what you've got. Untested, ought to be close.