How do I call Windows DLL functions from Ruby?

c, dll, ruby, windows

Solution

Have a look at `Win32API` stdlib. It's a fairly easy (but arcane) interface to the Windows 32 API, or DLLs.

Documentation is here, some examples here. To give you a taste:

require "Win32API"    
def get_computer_name
  name = " " * 128
  size = "128"
  Win32API.new('kernel32', 'GetComputerName', ['P', 'P'], 'I').call(name, size)  
  name.unpack("A*")  
end

Problem

I want to access functions within a DLL using Ruby. I want to use the low-level access of C while still retaining the simplicity of writing Ruby code. How do I accomplish this?

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