Passing custom information from C# to AutoIT

[DStraathof]

Hi all,

I have an issue with a custom C# library & functions trying to use the result of these functions in AutoIT.

I have a custom library which can or will not be ported to AutoIT. It is however operational in C#. Therefor I started looking and searching for options to pass the result of a request to this library (using C#) to AutoIT.

I found LarsJ's examples of a DotNet AutoIt library, which could be helpful in using the necessary libraries and C# code in AutoIT.

 

The custom library will securely (using all types of verification and security levels) select user credentials for a given customerID.

The following C# code will actually do that (sorry, won't be able to post the library DLLs itself)

using System;
using SecureLib;

namespace CustomerDetails
{
    class User
    {
        static void Main()
        {
            var userdetails = CMDB("23680"); // get the userdetails for customerID 23680
            
            foreach (var item in userdetails)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(item);
            }
            Console.ReadLine();
        }

        static public string[,] CMDB(string cmp)
        {
            var y = new SecLibrary.Control();
            var testInfo = y.FetchTestInformation(ref cmp);
            string[,] SelectedUser = new string[,] {
            { "Username", testInfo.Username.ToString() },
            { "Password", testInfo.Password.ToString() },
            { "WebURL", testInfo.WebURL.ToString() }
            };
            return SelectedUser;
        }
    }
}

Next, I tried to grab the given information from the CMDB static stringarray in AutoIT usoing the following:

#include "..\..\..\..\Includes\DotNetAll.au3"

Opt( "MustDeclareVars", 1 )

Example()

Func Example()
    Local $oNetCode = DotNet_LoadCScode( FileRead( "Program.cs" ), "System.dll | C:\References\Secure Library\SecLibrary.dll | C:\References\Secure Library\Security.ServiceBus.Helpers.dll" )
    Local $oUserDetails = DotNet_CreateObject( $oNetCode, "CustomerDetails" )
    Local $aVariants = $oUserDetails.CMDB('23680')
    _ArrayDisplay( $aVariants )
EndFunc

When running the C# code it will give me the user details for the given customerID, but when running the AutoIT code it will error on:

The requested action with this object has failed.:
Local $aVariants = $oUserDetails.CMDB('23680')
Local $aVariants = $oUserDetails^ ERROR

I surely hope that one of the "Walking C# AutoIT knowledge base guru's" 😉 can help me out here...

Thanks in advance.

 

 

 

[LarsJ]

DotNet_CreateObject takes class as second parameter and if you use a namespace it must be "namespace.class".

The method called in the AutoIt code must be defined relatively simple. In CMDB, the static keyword causes problems. The general solution is to add a new simple method to handle the communication between AutoIt and the C# code. Here getCMDB.

I've tested this code:

using System;

namespace CustomerDetails
{
  class User
  {
    public string[,] getCMDB(string cmp)
    {
      return CMDB(cmp);
    }
    
    static public string[,] CMDB(string cmp)
    {
      string[,] SelectedUser = new string[,] {
      { "Username", "Username" },
      { "Password", "Password" },
      { "WebURL", "WebURL" }
      };
      return SelectedUser;
    }
  }
}

#include "DotNetAll.au3"
#include <Array.au3>

Opt( "MustDeclareVars", 1 )

Example()

Func Example()
  Local $oNetCode = DotNet_LoadCScode( FileRead( "tst00.cs" ), "System.dll" )
  Local $oUserDetails = DotNet_CreateObject( $oNetCode, "CustomerDetails.User" )
  Local $aVariants = $oUserDetails.getCMDB('23680')
  _ArrayDisplay( $aVariants )
EndFunc

 

Note that arrays are different in AutoIt and C# code as rows and columns are swapped. You may want to use this array in the C# code:

{ "Username", "Password", "WebURL" },
{ "Username", "Password", "WebURL" }

 

[DStraathof]

Hi LarsJ,

Thank you for a clear reply. Using the extra getCMDB function works for returning the string array.

The issue I'm currently facing is the usage of the SecureLib library with the 2 extra DLLs, and this function call in the C# code:

            var y = new SecLibrary.Control();
            var testInfo = y.FetchTestInformation(ref cmp);

Will try myself using another personally created DLL will face the same problem.

Keep you posted!

[DStraathof]

I have tested with a more basic custom DLL, but I can't get it to work properly. It seems that loading the custom DLL works, but referring from the C# script to this, by AutoIT loaded, DLL doesn't seems to work:

Here's my class DLL:

using System;

namespace SelectUser
{
    public class Greetings
    {
        public static string Hello(string name)
        {
            return $"Greetings {name}";
        }
    }
}

This is the Program.cs, using/including the SelectUser.dll class created using Visual Studio:

using System;
using SelectUser;

namespace CustomerDetails
{
  class User
  {
    public string getCMDB(string cmp)
    {
      return Greetings.Hello(cmp);
    }
  }
}

This is the AutoIT script:

#include "..\..\..\..\Includes\DotNetAll.au3"
#include <Array.au3>

Opt( "MustDeclareVars", 1 )

Example()

Func Example()
  Local $oNetCode = DotNet_LoadCScode( FileRead( "Program.cs" ), "System.dll | C:\References\SelectUser.dll" )
  Local $oUserDetails = DotNet_CreateObject( $oNetCode, "CustomerDetails.User" )
  Local $sVariants = $oUserDetails.getCMDB('23680')
  ConsoleWrite( $sVariants )
EndFunc

Could it be the nesting namespacing (form the .cs and the .dll and functions in C# that are blocking?

The expected output should be: "Greetings 23680"

Thanks for the help.

 

Program.cs ToAutoItCS.au3 Class1.cs

[LarsJ]

When running C# code through AutoIt, there are probably some restrictions over what you can do in pure C# code. In the examples with DotNet_LoadCScode(), only assemblies registered in the GAC are used. In contrast, assemblies not registered in the GAC are loaded with DotNet_LoadAssembly().

In a very short test, I also couldn't make your code work. But I've made this code work:

using System;

namespace SelectUser
{
  public class Greetings
  {
    public static string Hello(string name)
    {
      return "Greetings " + name;
    }
  }
}

namespace CustomerDetails
{
  class User
  {
    public string getCMDB(string cmp)
    {
      return SelectUser.Greetings.Hello(cmp);
    }
  }
}

#include "DotNetAll.au3"

DotNet_LoadCScode( FileRead( "tst02.cs" ), "System.dll", 0, "tst02.dll" )

#include "DotNetAll.au3"

Opt( "MustDeclareVars", 1 )

Example()

Func Example()
  Local $oComErrFunc = ObjEvent( "AutoIt.Error", "ComErrFunc" )
  Local $oNetCode = DotNet_LoadAssembly( "tst02.dll" )
  Local $oUserDetails = DotNet_CreateObject( $oNetCode, "CustomerDetails.User" )
  Local $sVariants = $oUserDetails.getCMDB('23680')
  ConsoleWrite( $sVariants )
EndFunc

In Visual Studio, if you create a single assembly dll and load it with DotNet_LoadAssembly(), it might be the easiest.

Run the AutoIt code in SciTE with F5 so you can see error messages in the console. In the code above I've added a COM error handler.

[DStraathof]

Hi LarsJ,

Thanks for the reply. I will test it this tomorrow.

The issue why I need to include extra external DLLs is, that I can't include the functions from the Security DLLs in my own coded DLL.
The external DLLs being:

C:\References\Secure Library\SecLibrary.dll | C:\References\Secure Library\Security.ServiceBus.Helpers.dll" 

I need to find a way to do this, but I'll try your example code and let you know 🙂

Thanks again for thinking this through.

[DStraathof]

As I was afraid.... I need both external DLLs to be loaded into the AutoIT script.

I cannot use the 'concatenate' option as with the DotNet_LoadCScode() function to load both DLLs in the same AutoIT object:

Local $oNetCode = DotNet_LoadAssembly( "C:\References\Secure Library\SecLibrary.dll | C:\References\Secure Library\Security.ServiceBus.Helpers.dll" )

It returns an error:

ToAutoItCS.au3(1136): ==> COM Error intercepted!
    Err.number is:      0x000000A9
    Err.windescription: Variable must be of type 'Object'.  Err.description is:     
    Err.source is:      
    Err.helpfile is:    
    Err.helpcontext is:     
    Err.lastdllerror is:    0
    Err.scriptline is:  1136
    Err.retcode is:     0x00000000

Is it possible to have 2 objects, and assign the compiled functions both in one AutoIT DotNet_CreateObject (hence the { } ), i.e.:

#include "Includes\DotNetAll.au3"
#include <Array.au3>

Opt( "MustDeclareVars", 1 )

Example()

Func Example()
  Local $oComErrFunc = ObjEvent( "AutoIt.Error", "ComErrFunc" )
  Local $oNetCodeLibrary = DotNet_LoadAssembly( "C:\References\Secure Library\SecLibrary.dll" )
  Local $oNetCodeServiceBus = DotNet_LoadAssembly( "C:\References\Secure Library\Security.ServiceBus.Helpers.dll" )  
  Local $oSecureControl = DotNet_CreateObject( {$oNetCodeLibrary,$oNetCodeServiceBus}, "SecLibrary.Control" )
  Local $oUserDetails = $oSecureControl.FetchTestInformation('23680')
  ConsoleWrite( $oUserDetails.Username )
EndFunc

Thanks again for thinking with me 🙂

 

[LarsJ]

I don't know. What did you see when you ran the code? I'll take a closer look at the problem with third party assembly dlls. But I need time. Until there is nothing else to do but separate C# and AutoIt code. If you need the results from C# in AutoIt, you'll have to pass them through a file or similar.

[DStraathof]

Hi LarsJ,

Because both DLLs won't be loaded, the error states:

Unable to parse line.: 
Local $oSecureControl = DotNet_CreateObject( {$oNetCodeLibrary,$oNetCodeServiceBus}, "SecLibrary.Control" ) 
Local $oSecurecontrol = DotNet_CreateObject( ^ ERROR

So basically no clear error about this.

I myself was also thinking about exchanging data between C# and AutoIt through a file. I'll try and see what will happen there.

Thanks for looking into it.