Develop Reference

Delta Chat Rust integration in Spring Boot App

i'm currently building a Spring Boot Application and i want to send some Mails via Chat over IMAP. Deltachat implements COI.
DeltaChat offers an API written in RUST.
https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust
As written here https://support.delta.chat/t/bindings-for-java/970
The Java Bindings should be implemented by the Android App
https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-android/tree/master/src/com/b44t/messenger
Plus I need to get up the JNI:
https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-android/tree/master/jni
I copied the two folders jni and messenger into a separate java project along with deltachat-core-rust Projekt.
However, I am not sure how to connect the Java classes to the C code.
What is the best way to do this?
In the JNI folder there is still the Android.mk class, do I have to implement what is implemented there myself?
Update:
Now I have created the shared library with the following code:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
project(deltachat LANGUAGES C)
find_package(JNI REQUIRED)
# generate libnative.jnilib
include_directories(${JNI_INCLUDE_DIRS} )
add_library(native MODULE dc_wrapper.c ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/deltachat-core-rust/deltachat-ffi/deltachat.h)
#set_target_properties(native PROPERTIES SUFFIX ".jnilib")
target_link_libraries(native ${JNI_LIBRARIES} )
target_link_libraries(native ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/deltachat-core-rust/target/release/libdeltachat.a)
Is this correct?
When i try to run this:
import messenger.DcContext;
public class MainJni {
static {
System.loadLibrary("native");
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
DcContext dcContext = new DcContext("ubuntu", "example.db");
if(dcContext == null){
}
}
}
I get this error
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /home/robin/Documents/DeltaChatCoreJavaBindings/src/jni/build/libnative.so: /home/robin/Documents/DeltaChatCoreJavaBindings/src/jni/build/libnative.so: undefined symbol: SSL_get_error
at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load0(Native Method)
at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(ClassLoader.java:2442)
at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:2498)
at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:2694)
at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:2659)
at java.base/java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:830)
at java.base/java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1873)
at MainJni.<clinit>(MainJni.java:6)
Any suggestions?

The dc_wrapper.c file contains C functions of the form Java_com_b44t_* that implements the native methods in the corresponding Java package.
In order to get this working on any platform, you need to create a build system (Make, CMake, Xmake, Ninja, ...) that:
compiles the Rust crate into a static library;
compiles the dc_wrapper.c into a dynamically loadable library that is linked with the rust crate.
Finally, you can use the com.b44t.messenger.* classes from Java, which should automatically load the library created in step two.
The android.mk file is mostly android-specific compile options, so you should not look too hard at it.

Invoking native methods from JAVA when creating the JVM from C++?

I have a situation of a C++ executable which creates a JVM using JNI_CreateJavaVM, and that java method wants to invoke a native method back:
//In Java:
private native void myNativeMethod();
//In C++:
JNIEXPORT void JNICALL
Java_SomeClass_myNativeMethod(JNIEnv *env, jobject instance) {
..
}
But it doesn't work (linking error).
BUT, if I move the method into a c++ library and load the library from Java using System.loadLibrary, it does work.
Any way of enabling this behaviour with only a c++ executable without going through the trouble of having 3 pieces (main c++ executable => starting a JVM and running a jar => loading a c++ library) but instead keeping it at two?
Thanks!

When loading a native library in Java using System.loadLibrary, it is stored internally in a list that is attached to the current ClassLoader, and then this list of libraries is searched when looking up the native method. So, it will indeed not see the native method you have defined in the same executable.
You should be able to make this work using the RegisterNatives JNI API, which allows explicitly registering native functions for a particular class as pointers.
JNIEnv env = ...
jclass cSomeClass = env->FindClass("SomeClass");
JNINativeMethod natives[] = {
{(char*) "myNativeMethod", (char*) "()V", (void*) &Java_SomeClass_myNativeMethod},
};
env->RegisterNatives(cSomeClass, natives, 1);

Java 10 Panama Project - port JNI solutions to Panama

I have been reading about the Panama Project recently.
I understand that it will be the next generation replacement to JNI - it will allow java developers to code on the native layer using Java (which is amazing IMHO).
The usage is simple from what I can tell looking at jnr-posix, for example:
public class FileTest {
private static POSIX posix;
#BeforeClass
public static void setUpClass() throws Exception {
posix = POSIXFactory.getPOSIX(new DummyPOSIXHandler(), true);
}
#Test
public void utimesTest() throws Throwable {
// FIXME: On Windows this is working but providing wrong numbers and therefore getting wrong results.
if (!Platform.IS_WINDOWS) {
File f = File.createTempFile("utimes", null);
int rval = posix.utimes(f.getAbsolutePath(), new long[]{800, 200}, new long[]{900, 300});
assertEquals("utimes did not return 0", 0, rval);
FileStat stat = posix.stat(f.getAbsolutePath());
assertEquals("atime seconds failed", 800, stat.atime());
assertEquals("mtime seconds failed", 900, stat.mtime());
// The nano secs part is available in other stat implementations. We really just want to verify that the
// nsec portion of the timeval is passed through to the POSIX call.
// Mac seems to fail this test sporadically.
if (stat instanceof NanosecondFileStat && !Platform.IS_MAC) {
NanosecondFileStat linuxStat = (NanosecondFileStat) stat;
assertEquals("atime useconds failed", 200000, linuxStat.aTimeNanoSecs());
assertEquals("mtime useconds failed", 300000, linuxStat.mTimeNanoSecs());
}
f.delete();
}
}
// ....
// ....
// ....
}
My question is this - having worked with JNI, and knowing how cumbersome it is, will there be a solution for porting existing JNI solutions to the Panama format?
IE - go over the generated (via the deprecated javah) C header file and given implementation in C of the header file, identify functions which can be replaced by the Panama API, then generate a java output file?
Or will existing JNI solutions need to be refactored by hand?
Additional links :
OpenJDK: Panama
Working with Native Libraries in Java
JEP 191: Foreign Function Interface thanks to a comment made by Holger

The JNI format is as follows:
Java -> JNI glue-code library -> Native code
One of the goals of project panama is to remove this middle layer and get:
Java -> Native code
The idea is that you can use a command line tool to process a native header (.h) file to generate a Java interface for calling the native code, and the JDK code will do the rest at runtime as far as connecting the 2 together goes.
If your current JNI code does a lot of stuff in this glue-code layer, then that might have to be re-written on the Java side when porting to panama. (this depends on how much could be done automatically by the used interface extraction tool).
But if you are using something like JNA or JNR then moving to panama should be relatively easy, since those 2 have very similar APIs, where you bind an interface to a native library as well.
But questions like:
will there be a solution for porting existing JNI solutions to the Panama format?
Are difficult to answer, since nobody can predict the future. I feel that there are enough differences between panama and JNI that an automatic 1-to-1 conversion between the 2 will probably not be possible. Though if your glue-code is not doing much besides forwarding arguments then the interface extraction tool will probably be able to do all the work for you.
If you're interested you could take a look at the early access builds of panama that started shipping recently: https://jdk.java.net/panama/
Or watch a recent talk about it: https://youtu.be/cfxBrYud9KM

JNI Use native method

I'm working on a project where there's the need to call some methods from dll files.
These two dlls are
EasySign.dll
EasySignJNI
EasySignJNI depends on EasySign.
I wrote the class to load EasySignJNI as follows:
package easysign;
class EasySign {
EasySign(){}
public native String EasyHashFile(String filename);
public native int EasySign(String pkcs11_driver,String pin, int type, String file_data, int out_format, String signed_file, String cert_out, int cert_format);
public native int EasyVerify(String cert_user, String file_data, String signed_file, String crl_file, String ca_file, String out_document);
static {
System.loadLibrary("EasySignJNI");
}
}
Now I would call these method from my main method like this:
public class Test {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException{
EasySign es = new EasySign();
System.out.println("EasyHashFile : " + es.EasyHashFile("test.txt"));
}
}
What I have to specify in the -Djava.library.path ? Only the path where my EasySignJNI.dll is located? It is possible to call native method in this way?
I'm using NetBeans for completeness.
EDIT:
I have noticed that the third party dll provided to me (the JNI dll in particular) defines method names without any package, so I'm forced to put the class that loads the dll in the default package. Is there any way to change only the dll method names including my own package name?
EDIT 2:
What I mean is that both EasySign.dll and EasySignJNI.dll are provided me as they are and I can't modify them (I have not the source code). The EasySignJNI is the JNI portion but inspecting it I have noticed thath the method sign is in the form: _java_EasySign_MethodName. When I load the dll in Java from my Easysign class (this class must reside in the "mypackage" package), I receive the jni unsatisfiedlinkerror because, if I understood right, I'm calling the "_java_mypackage_EasySign_MethodName" method, i.e the sign is different from the dll's one. So the only way to make it work is to rewrite the JNI part and build it to have the correct sign of the JNI method?

What I have to specify in the -Djava.library.path ? Only the path where my EasySignJNI.dll is located?
Correct, the operating system will locate the dependent EasySign.dll for you as long as it is available where the OS expects it to be.
It is possible to call native method in this way? I'm using NetBeans for completeness.
I read through your edit and you have successfully lost me. What default package are you referring to? (Remember that none of us know what EasySign.dll is) So, I am going to provide some info about how I do what you originally described and hopefully it will help.
First start by compiling EasySign if you have the src. Do not build a DLL or shared object, instead build a static library. If you do not have the src code for EasySign, or a prebuilt static library, you will be stuck with the dll and can continue to the next step.
Now you are ready to compile the jni portion. All of your JNI C code should basically translate your Java input/output to their JVM/Native types and call the appropriate functions in the DLL library. You want to keep this layer and thin and simple as possible because it is incredibly difficult to debug. Your C++ package names shouldn't really matter here and you can use what ever package name you want for your Java classes. You should be able to compile the JNI code and preferably static link to the EasySign.dll file so you don't need to worry about distributing it. If you must dynamically link, make sure EasySign.dll gets installed to a location that is on the DLL PATH / LDPATH because the OS will need to locate and load that file right after the JVM loads the JNI DLL.
At this point you should just be able to point -Djava.library.path at your JNI DLL's path and all should work.

How to use the same C++ code for Android and iOS?

Android with NDK has support to C/C++ code and iOS with Objective-C++ has support too, so how can I write applications with native C/C++ code shared between Android and iOS?

Update.
This answer is quite popular even four years after I write it, in this four years a lot of things has changed, so I decided to update my answer to fit better our current reality. The answer idea does not change; the implementation has changed a little. My English also has changed, it has improved a lot, so the answer is more understandable to everyone now.
Please take a look at the repo so you can download and run the code I'll show below.
The Answer
Before I show the code, please take a lot on the following diagram.
Each OS has its UI and peculiarities, so we intend to write specific code to each platform in this regard. In other hands, all logic code, business rules, and things that can be shared we intend to write using C++, so we can compile the same code to each platform.
In the diagram, you can see the C++ layer at the lowest level. All shared code is in this segment. The highest level is regular Obj-C / Java / Kotlin code, no news here, the hard part is the middle layer.
The middle layer to iOS side is simple; you only need to configure your project to build using a variant of Obj-c know as Objective-C++ and it is all, you have access to C++ code.
The thing became harder on the Android side, both languages, Java and Kotlin, on Android, run under a Java Virtual Machine. So the only way to access C++ code is using JNI, please take time to read the basics of JNI. Fortunately, today's Android Studio IDE has vast improvements on JNI side, and a lot of problems are shown to you while you edit your code.
The code by steps
Our sample is a simple app that you send a text to CPP, and it converts that text to something else and returns it. The idea is, iOS will send "Obj-C" and Android will send "Java" from their respective languages, and the CPP code will create a text as a follow "cpp says hello to << text received >>".
Shared CPP code
First of all, we are going to create the shared CPP code, doing it we have a simple header file with the method declaration that receives the desired text:
#include <iostream>
const char *concatenateMyStringWithCppString(const char *myString);
And the CPP implementation:
#include <string.h>
#include "Core.h"
const char *CPP_BASE_STRING = "cpp says hello to %s";
const char *concatenateMyStringWithCppString(const char *myString) {
char *concatenatedString = new char[strlen(CPP_BASE_STRING) + strlen(myString)];
sprintf(concatenatedString, CPP_BASE_STRING, myString);
return concatenatedString;
}
Unix
An interesting bonus is, we can also use the same code for Linux and Mac as well as other Unix systems. This possibility is especially useful because we can test our shared code faster, so we are going to create a Main.cpp as follow to execute it from our machine and see if the shared code is working.
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include "../CPP/Core.h"
int main() {
std::string textFromCppCore = concatenateMyStringWithCppString("Unix");
std::cout << textFromCppCore << '\n';
return 0;
}
To build the code, you need to execute:
$ g++ Main.cpp Core.cpp -o main
$ ./main
cpp says hello to Unix
iOS
It is time to implement on the mobile side. As far as iOS has a simple integration we are starting with it. Our iOS app is a typical Obj-c app with only one difference; the files are .mm and not .m. i.e. It is an Obj-C++ app, not an Obj-C app.
To a better organization, we create the CoreWrapper.mm as follow:
#import "CoreWrapper.h"
#implementation CoreWrapper
+ (NSString*) concatenateMyStringWithCppString:(NSString*)myString {
const char *utfString = [myString UTF8String];
const char *textFromCppCore = concatenateMyStringWithCppString(utfString);
NSString *objcString = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:textFromCppCore];
return objcString;
}
#end
This class has the responsibility to convert CPP types and calls to Obj-C types and calls. It is not mandatory once you can call CPP code on any file you want on Obj-C, but it helps to keep the organisation, and outside your wrapper files you maintain a complete Obj-C styled code, only the wrappers file become CPP styled.
Once your wrapper is connected to the CPP code, you can use it as a standard Obj-C code, e.g. ViewController"
#import "ViewController.h"
#import "CoreWrapper.h"
#interface ViewController ()
#property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UILabel *label;
#end
#implementation ViewController
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
NSString* textFromCppCore = [CoreWrapper concatenateMyStringWithCppString:#"Obj-C++"];
[_label setText:textFromCppCore];
}
#end
Take a look of how the app looks:
Android
Now it is time for Android integration. Android uses Gradle as the build system, and to C/C++ code it uses CMake. So the first thing we need to do is to configure the CMake on gradle file:
android {
...
externalNativeBuild {
cmake {
path "CMakeLists.txt"
}
}
...
defaultConfig {
externalNativeBuild {
cmake {
cppFlags "-std=c++14"
}
}
...
}
And the second step is to add the CMakeLists.txt file:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.4.1)
include_directories (
../../CPP/
)
add_library(
native-lib
SHARED
src/main/cpp/native-lib.cpp
../../CPP/Core.h
../../CPP/Core.cpp
)
find_library(
log-lib
log
)
target_link_libraries(
native-lib
${log-lib}
)
The CMake file is where you need to add the CPP files and header folders you will use on the project, on our example, we are adding the CPP folder and the Core.h/.cpp files. To know more about C/C++ configuration please read it.
Now the core code is part of our app it is time to create the bridge, to make the things more simple and organized we create a specific class named CoreWrapper to be our wrapper between JVM and CPP:
public class CoreWrapper {
public native String concatenateMyStringWithCppString(String myString);
static {
System.loadLibrary("native-lib");
}
}
Note this class has a native method and loads a native library named native-lib. This library is the one we create, in the end, the CPP code will become a shared object .so File embed in our APK, and the loadLibrary will load it. Finally, when you call the native method, the JVM will delegate the call to the loaded library.
Now the most strange part of Android integration is the JNI; We need a cpp file as follow, in our case "native-lib.cpp":
extern "C" {
JNIEXPORT jstring JNICALL Java_ademar_androidioscppexample_CoreWrapper_concatenateMyStringWithCppString(JNIEnv *env, jobject /* this */, jstring myString) {
const char *utfString = env->GetStringUTFChars(myString, 0);
const char *textFromCppCore = concatenateMyStringWithCppString(utfString);
jstring javaString = env->NewStringUTF(textFromCppCore);
return javaString;
}
}
The first thing you will notice is the extern "C" this part is necessary to JNI work correctly with our CPP code and method linkages. You will also see some symbols JNI uses to works with JVM as JNIEXPORT and JNICALL. To you understand the meaning of those things, it is necessary to take a time and read it, for this tutorial purposes just consider these things as boilerplate.
One significant thing and usually the root of a lot of problems is the name of the method; it needs to follow the pattern "Java_package_class_method". Currently, Android studio has excellent support for it so it can generate this boilerplate automatically and show to you when it is correct or not named. On our example our method is named "Java_ademar_androidioscppexample_CoreWrapper_concatenateMyStringWithCppString" it is because "ademar.androidioscppexample" is our package, so we replace the "." by "_", CoreWrapper is the class where we are linking the native method and "concatenateMyStringWithCppString" is the method name itself.
As we have the method correctly declared it is time to analyze the arguments, the first parameter is a pointer of JNIEnv it is the way we have access to JNI stuff, it is crucial to we make our conversions as you will see soon. The second is a jobject it is the instance of the object you had used to call this method. You can think it as the java "this", on our example we do not need to use it, but we still need to declare it. After this jobject, we are going to receive the arguments of the method. Because our method has only one argument - a String "myString", we have only a "jstring" with the same name. Also notice that our return type is also a jstring. It is because our Java method returns a String, for more information about Java/JNI types please read it.
The final step is to convert the JNI types to the types we use on CPP side. On our example, we are transforming the jstring to a const char * sending it converted to the CPP, getting the result and converting back to jstring. As all other steps on JNI, it is not hard; it is only boilerplated, all the work is done by the JNIEnv* argument we receive when we call the GetStringUTFChars and NewStringUTF. After it our code is ready to run on Android devices, lets take a look.

Approach described in the excellent answer above can be completely automated by Scapix Language Bridge which generates wrapper code on the fly directly from C++ headers. Here is an example:
Define your class in C++:
#include <scapix/bridge/object.h>
class contact : public scapix::bridge::object<contact>
{
public:
std::string name();
void send_message(const std::string& msg, std::shared_ptr<contact> from);
void add_tags(const std::vector<std::string>& tags);
void add_friends(std::vector<std::shared_ptr<contact>> friends);
};
And call it from Swift:
class ViewController: UIViewController {
func send(friend: Contact) {
let c = Contact()
contact.sendMessage("Hello", friend)
contact.addTags(["a","b","c"])
contact.addFriends([friend])
}
}
And from Java:
class View {
private contact = new Contact;
public void send(Contact friend) {
contact.sendMessage("Hello", friend);
contact.addTags({"a","b","c"});
contact.addFriends({friend});
}
}