Stuck on driver porting C's Pointer -> Java's Reference

[FlyNn]

Hi coffee fans,
I am using JNA to call functions from a C driver for a barcode scanner. The prototype functions in the .h file require Pointers (char*,bool*) and I cannot find a way to be able to pass them in Java. I know Java does not use Pointers, but References.

Is there any way that I could pass something that would act as a pointer? I've tried making objects and passing them in, but it does not work (unless I didn't do it right).

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

[DarrylBurke]

I have no experience in JNA/JNI, but once when I wanted to use, from Visual FoxPro, an ActiveX written in C that had similar requirements, I wrote a small C (actually, VC++) wrapper that could accept values and pass on their pointers to the wrapped ActiveX. You could try doing that.

db

[FlyNn]

Thanks for the help Darryl.

I would like to share how I have solved the problem just in case any one else happen to have the same problem.

So I have a C function

 foo(bool* value);

The problem is: how do you pass a boolean pointer to the class?

What I have done is declare a class extending import com.sun.jna.ptr.PointerByReference:

public class BooleanByReference extends PointerByReference{
    boolean value;
}

The usage:

public static void main (String[] args){
 BooleanByReference br = new BooleanByReference();

 foo(br);

 System.out.println(br); //Memory location
}

I started writing C wrappers and stuff when the problem was so simple.