Importing OpenGL Extensions Functions with wglGetProcAddress

There are only a small set of the core OpenGL functions that can be imported via p/invoke - the majority of OpenGL functions are actually extension functions which are supported only on specific video cards. OpenGL offers a function called wglGetProcAddress which can return the address of a named function - but how do we deal with this in the managed world?

Here's a brief description of how it's handled in SharpGL. As of this morning, SharpGL's latest version contains all core functions up to OpenGL 4.2 and all standard extensions up to OpenGL 4.2. This takes the support for OpenGL to the latest version - August 2011.

First we must import the wglGetProcAddress function:

[DllImport("opengl32.dll")]
public static extern IntPtr wglGetProcAddress(string name);

This is the correect p/invoke method of importing this function, however it returns an IntPtr, which we cannot call as a function. We could change the return type to a delegate but this function can return essentially any type of delegate - so where do we go from here?

Well the next step is to define the delegates we want to use - they must have exactly the same name as the OpenGL functions and use the correct parameters for marshalling. Here are a couple of delegates for OpenGL 1.4:

private delegate void glBlendFuncSeparate (uint sfactorRGB, uint dfactorRGB, uint sfactorAlpha, uint dfactorAlpha);
private delegate void glMultiDrawArrays (uint mode, int[] first, int[] count, int primcount);

Now we must create a function which will turn an IntPtr into a delegate and invoke it:

/// <summary>
/// The set of extension functions.
/// </summary>
private Dictionary<string, Delegate> extensionFunctions = new Dictionary<string, Delegate>();
/// <summary>
/// Invokes an extension function.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name=“T”>The extension delegate type.</typeparam>
/// <param name=“args”>The arguments to the pass to the function.</param>
/// <returns>The return value of the extension function.</returns>
private object InvokeExtensionFunction<T>(params object[] args)
{
//  Get the type of the extension function.
Type delegateType = typeof(T);
//  Get the name of the extension function.
string name = delegateType.Name;

//  Does the dictionary contain our extension function?
Delegate del = null;
if (extensionFunctions.ContainsKey(name) == false)
{
    //  We haven't loaded it yet. Load it now.
    IntPtr proc = Win32.wglGetProcAddress(name);
    if (proc == IntPtr.Zero)
        throw new Exception("Extension function " + name + " not supported");

    //  Get the delegate for the function pointer.
    del = Marshal.GetDelegateForFunctionPointer(proc, delegateType);
    if (del == null)
        throw new Exception("Extension function " + name + " not supported");

    //  Add to the dictionary.
    extensionFunctions.Add(name, del);
}

//  Get the delegate.
del = extensionFunctions[name];

//  Try and invoke it.
object result = null;
try
{
    result = del.DynamicInvoke(args);
}
catch
{
    throw new Exception("Cannot invoke extension function " + name);
}

return result;
}

We now have a generalised way to invoke an extension function. The loaded functions are stored in a dictionary keyed by name so that the heavy lifting is only done the first time we try to invoke the function.  We can finally add the functions to the class as below:

public void BlendFuncSeparate(uint sfactorRGB, uint dfactorRGB, uint sfactorAlpha, uint dfactorAlpha)
{
    InvokeExtensionFunction<glBlendFuncSeparate>(sfactorRGB, dfactorRGB, sfactorAlpha, dfactorAlpha);
}
public void MultiDrawArrays(uint mode, int[] first, int[] count, int primcount)
{
InvokeExtensionFunction<glMultiDrawArrays>(mode, first, count, primcount);
}

This is pretty cool - we can invoke any extension function as long as we have defined a delegate for it. What's more, by making the InvokeExtensionFunction function public we can allow other developers to provide their own delegates and invoke other extension functions.

This is the technique used in SharpGL 2.0 to import extension functions - the Core/OpenGLExtensions.cs file contains thousands of lines of functions defined like this, however knowing how to invoke any kind of delegate is a useful skill in the managed world, so this trick could be used in other places.

The version of SharpGL this post relates to is at:

http://sharpgl.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/4474