Need to run a c# dll from the command line

Question

I have a c# dll defined like this:

namespace SMSNotificationDll
{
    public class smsSender
    {
        public void SendMessage(String number, String message)
        {
            ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo();
            info.FileName = "c:\\Program Files\\Java\\jdk1.6.0_24\\bin\\java";
            info.WorkingDirectory = "c:\\";
            info.Arguments = "-jar SendSms.jar "+number + " "+message;
            info.UseShellExecute = false;
            Process.Start(info);
        }
    }
}

and i need to execute it from the commandline.

Is there any way I can run it through rundll32?

When I run it with this :

rundll32 SMSNotificationDll.dll, SendMessage 0749965244 hello

I get missing entry: SendMessage.

Nick Bilak · Answer 1 · 2013-08-23T08:52:14.163

17

There is a trick to create unmanaged exports from c# too - https://www.nuget.org/packages/UnmanagedExports

How does it work? Create a new classlibrary or proceed with an existing one. Then add the UnmanagedExports Nuget package. This is pretty much all setup that is required. Now you can write any kind of static method, decorate it with [DllExport] and use it from native code. It works just like DllImport, so you can customize the marshalling of parameters/result with MarshalAsAttribute. During compilation, the task will modify the IL to add the required exports.

class Test
{
  [DllExport("add", CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
  public static int TestExport(int left, int right)
  {
     return left + right;
  } 
}

edited Aug 23 '13 at 08:52

answered Aug 23 '13 at 08:23

Nick Bilak

201
2
7

Why is this answer down-voted, is there any problem with this approach? It looks actually quite promising to me. – Mikhail Jul 08 '14 at 05:14
yeah no kidding, this is way awesome. – Michael Socha Feb 27 '15 at 19:24
While this approach maybe useful in some cases, I assume it also does have some limitations, e.g. I was unable to pass a string argument from rundll32. – Dmitry Popov Aug 20 '15 at 14:04
Can you please give an example of how to call this method using rundll from the command line? – bboyle1234 Jul 18 '17 at 21:29

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered May 26 '11 at 12:59

Why don't you just create a simple console application which refers to the DLL as a class library?

namespace SMSNotificationDll
{
    public class SmsSenderProgram
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // TODO: Argument validation
            new smsSender().SendMessage(args[0], args[1]);
        }
    }
}

Btw, I'd rename smsSender to something like SmsSender.

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered May 26 '11 at 13:00

2

RunDll32 only works with DLLs specifically designed to be called from it. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/164787 for more information.

The easiest way to run the code in that DLL from the command line would be to make a simple C# command line app whose sole purpose is to call that method.

answered May 26 '11 at 13:00

Andy

30,088
6
78
89

thanks. Like I said, very new to the MS world. Upvote for keeping me from spending hours trying to do something that wont work. – Nico May 26 '11 at 13:11

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

1

See this question you can't run a .NET dll using rundll32

edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

Community

1
1

answered May 26 '11 at 13:00

Emond

50,210
11
84
115

Need to run a c# dll from the command line

4 Answers4

Linked

Related