docs/sources/mono-api-object.html
The object API deals with all the operations shared by objects, value types, arrays.
The object API has methods for accessing fields, properties, methods, events, delegates.
There are some advanced uses that are useful to document here dealing with remote fields.
#include <metadata/object.h> typedef struct MonoVTable MonoVTable; typedef struct _MonoThreadsSync MonoThreadsSync; typedef struct { MonoVTable *vtable; MonoThreadsSync *synchronisation; } MonoObject; typedef struct { guint32 length; guint32 lower_bound; } MonoArrayBounds; typedef struct { MonoObject obj; /* bounds is NULL for szarrays */ MonoArrayBounds *bounds; /* total number of elements of the array */ guint32 max_length; /* we use double to ensure proper alignment on platforms that need it */ double vector [MONO_ZERO_LEN_ARRAY]; } MonoArray; @API_IDX@
MonoObject is the base definition for all managed objects in the Mono runtime, it represents the System.Object managed type.
All objects that derive from System.Object do have this base definition. Derived objects are declared following the pattern where the parent class is the first field of a structure definition, for example:
typedef struct { MonoObject parent; int my_new_field; } MyNewObject
For example, if you wanted to create an object of type System.Version, you would use a piece of code like this:
MonoClass *version_class; MonoObject *result; /* Get the class from mscorlib */ version_class = mono_class_from_name (mono_get_corlib (), "System", "Version"); /* Create an object of that class */ result = mono_object_new (mono_domain_get (), version_class);
Use the mono_array_new_* methods to create arrays of a given type.
For example, the following code creates an array with two elements of type System.Byte, and sets the values 0xca and 0xfe on it:
MonoArray *CreateByteArray (MonoDomain *domain)
{
MonoArray *data;
data = mono_array_new (domain, mono_get_byte_class (), 2);
mono_array_set (data, guint8, 0, 0xca);
mono_array_set (data, guint8, 0, 0xfe);
return data;
}
Arrays are represented by the MonoArray data type and are instances of MonoObject. While you can use the bounds and max_length fields of the type, the actual storage (represented by vector) is not very useful. Instead you should use one of the accesor methods described below to fetch or set the values in the array.
When setting values in an array, you should use mono_array_set for setting elements in an array that contains value types, and mono_array_setref for arrays that contain reference types.
The mono_array_get, mono_array_set and mono_array_setref are C macros that wrap the underlying array access.