How to access data from pointer in struct from Python with ctypes?

Question

I have the following C struct:

typedef struct {
    uint8_t a;
    uint8_t b;
    uint32_t c;
    uint8_t* d;
}

With ctypes, via a callback

Answer 1

You are assuming that c directly follows b which is not the case. The compiler will pad a few bytes, 2 on x86, in that structure to align c.

The proper way is to declare one-to-one mapping of your structure in ctypes:

from ctypes import *

class object_t(Structure):
    _fields_ = [
        ('a', c_uint8),
        ('b', c_uint8),
        ('c', c_uint32),
        ('d', POINTER(c_uint8)),
    ]

No you can obtain the value of any member thought this type.

C example library:

#include 
#include 

struct object_t {
  uint8_t a;
  uint8_t b;
  uint32_t c;
  uint8_t* d;
};

static struct object_t object = {'a', 'b', 12345, NULL};

struct object_t * func1(void)
{
  return &object;
}

void func2(void(*callback)(struct object_t *))
{
  callback(&object);
}

Using it from Python:

from ctypes import *

class object_t(Structure):
    _fields_ = [
        ('a', c_uint8),
        ('b', c_uint8),
        ('c', c_uint32),
        ('d', POINTER(c_uint8)),
    ]

callback_t = CFUNCTYPE(None, POINTER(object_t))

lib = CDLL('./file.dll')

func1 = lib.func1
func1.argtypes = None
func1.restype  = POINTER(object_t)

func2 = lib.func2
func2.argtypes = [callback_t]
func2.restype   = None

ret = func1()

a = ret.contents.a
b = ret.contents.b
c = ret.contents.c
d = ret.contents.d

def mycallback(obj):
    a = obj.contents.a
    b = obj.contents.b
    c = obj.contents.c
    d = obj.contents.d

func2(callback_t(mycallback))