The material in this appendix was
contributed by and used with the permission of Andrea Provaglio
(www.AndreaProvaglio.com).
The Java language and its standard
API are rich enough to write full-fledged applications. But in some cases you
must call non-Java code; for
example, if you want to access operating-system-specific features,
interface with special hardware
devices, reuse a preexisting, non-Java code base, or implement
time-critical sections of code.
Interfacing with non-Java code requires
dedicated support in the compiler and in the Virtual Machine, and additional
tools to map the Java code to the non-Java code. The standard solution for
calling non-Java code that is provided by JavaSoft is called the Java Native
Interface, which will be introduced in this appendix. This is not an
in-depth treatment, and in some cases you’re assumed to have partial
knowledge of the related concepts and
techniques.
JNI is a fairly rich programming
interface that allows you to call native methods from a Java application. It was
added in Java 1.1, maintaining a certain degree of compatibility with its Java
1.0 equivalent: the native
method interface (NMI). NMI has design characteristics that make it unsuitable
for adoption across all virtual machines. For this reason, future versions of
the language might no longer support NMI, and it will not be covered
here.
Currently, JNI is designed to interface
with native methods written only in C or C++. Using JNI,
your native methods can:
Thus,
virtually everything you can do with classes and objects in ordinary Java you
can also do in native methods.
We’ll start with a simple example:
a Java program that calls a native method, which in turn calls the standard C
library function printf( ).
The first step is to write the Java code
declaring a native method and its arguments:
//: appendixb:ShowMessage.java public class ShowMessage { private native void ShowMessage(String msg); static { System.loadLibrary("MsgImpl"); // Linux hack, if you can't get your library // path set in your environment: // System.load( // "/home/bruce/tij2/appendixb/MsgImpl.so"); } public static void main(String[] args) { ShowMessage app = new ShowMessage(); app.ShowMessage("Generated with JNI"); } } ///:~
The native method declaration is followed
by a static block that calls System.loadLibrary( ) (which you
could call at any time, but this style is more appropriate).
System.loadLibrary( ) loads a DLL in memory and links to it. The DLL
must be in your system library path. The file name extension is automatically
added by the JVM depending on the platform.
In the above code you can also see a call
to the System.load( ) method, which is commented out. The path
specified here is an absolute path, rather than relying on an environment
variable. Using an environment variable is naturally the better and more
portable solution, but if you can’t figure that out you can comment out
the loadLibrary( ) call and uncomment this one, adjusting the path
to your own directory.
Now compile your Java source file and run
javah on the resulting .class file,
specifying the –jni switch (this is done automatically for you by
the makefile in the source code distribution for this book):
javah –jni ShowMessage
javah reads the Java class file
and for each native method declaration it generates a function prototype in a C
or C++ header file. Here’s the output: the ShowMessage.h source
file (edited slightly to fit into this book):
/* DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - it is machine generated */ #include <jni.h> /* Header for class ShowMessage */ #ifndef _Included_ShowMessage #define _Included_ShowMessage #ifdef __cplusplus extern "C" { #endif /* * Class: ShowMessage * Method: ShowMessage * Signature: (Ljava/lang/String;)V */ JNIEXPORT void JNICALL Java_ShowMessage_ShowMessage (JNIEnv *, jobject, jstring); #ifdef __cplusplus } #endif #endif
As you can see by the #ifdef
__cplusplus preprocessor directive, this file can be compiled either by a C
or a C++ compiler. The first #include directive includes jni.h, a
header file that, among other things, defines the types that you can see used in
the rest of the file. JNIEXPORT and
JNICALL are macros that expand to match
platform-specific directives. JNIEnv, jobject and jstring
are JNI data type definitions, which will be explained shortly.
JNI imposes a naming convention (called
name mangling) on native methods. This is important, since it’s
part of the mechanism by which the virtual machine links Java calls to native
methods. Basically, all native methods start with the word “Java,”
followed by the name of the class in which the Java native declaration appears,
followed by the name of the Java method. The underscore character is used as a
separator. If the Java native method is overloaded, then the function signature
is appended to the name as well; you can see the native signature in the
comments preceding the prototype. For more information about name mangling and
native method signatures, please refer to the JNI
documentation.
At this point, all you have to do is
write a C or C++ source code file that includes the javah-generated
header file and implements the native method, then compile it and generate a
dynamic link library. This part is platform-dependent. The code below is
compiled and linked into a file called MsgImpl.dll for Windows or
MsgImpl.so for Unix/Linux (the makefile packaged with the code listings
contains the commands to do this—it is available on the CD ROM bound into
this book, or as a free download from
www.BruceEckel.com):
//: appendixb:MsgImpl.cpp //# Tested with VC++ & BC++. Include path must //# be adjusted to find the JNI headers. See //# the makefile for this chapter (in the //# downloadable source code) for an example. #include <jni.h> #include <stdio.h> #include "ShowMessage.h" extern "C" JNIEXPORT void JNICALL Java_ShowMessage_ShowMessage(JNIEnv* env, jobject, jstring jMsg) { const char* msg=env->GetStringUTFChars(jMsg,0); printf("Thinking in Java, JNI: %s\n", msg); env->ReleaseStringUTFChars(jMsg, msg); } ///:~
The arguments that are passed into the
native method are the gateway back into Java. The first, of type
JNIEnv, contains all the hooks that allow you to call back into
the JVM. (We’ll look at this in the next section.) The second argument has
a different meaning depending on the type of method. For non-static
methods like the example above, the second argument is the equivalent of the
“this” pointer in C++ and similar to this in Java: it’s
a reference to the object that called the native method. For static
methods, it’s a reference to the Class object where the method is
implemented.
The remaining arguments represent the
Java objects passed into the native method call. Primitives are also passed in
this way, but they come in by value.
In the following sections we’ll
explain this code by looking at the ways that you access and control the JVM
from inside a native method.
JNI functions are those that the
programmer uses to interact with the JVM from inside a native method. As you can
see in the example above, every JNI native method receives a special argument as
its first parameter: the JNIEnv argument, which is a pointer to a special
JNI data structure of type JNIEnv_. One element of the JNI data structure
is a pointer to an array generated by the JVM. Each element of this array is a
pointer to a JNI function. The JNI functions can be called from the native
method by dereferencing these pointers (it’s simpler than it sounds).
Every JVM provides its own implementation of the JNI functions, but their
addresses will always be at predefined offsets.
Through the JNIEnv argument, the
programmer has access to a large set of functions. These functions can be
grouped into the following categories:
The number of JNI
functions is quite large and won’t be covered here. Instead, I’ll
show the rationale behind the use of these functions. For more detailed
information, consult your compiler’s JNI documentation.
If you take a look at the jni.h
header file, you’ll see that inside the #ifdef __cplusplus
preprocessor conditional, the JNIEnv_ structure is defined as a class
when compiled by a C++ compiler. This class contains a number of inline
functions that let you access the JNI functions with an easy and familiar
syntax. For example, the line of C++ code in the preceding
example:
env->ReleaseStringUTFChars(jMsg, msg);
could also be called from C like
this:
(*env)->ReleaseStringUTFChars(env, jMsg, msg);
You’ll notice that the C style is
(naturally) more complicated—you need a double dereferencing of the
env pointer, and you must also pass the same pointer as the first
parameter to the JNI function call. The examples in this appendix use the C++
style.
As an example of accessing a JNI
function, consider the code in MsgImpl.cpp. Here, the JNIEnv
argument env is used to access a Java String. Java Strings
are in Unicode format, so if you receive one and want to pass it to a
non-Unicode function (printf( ), for example), you must first
convert it into ASCII characters with the JNI function
GetStringUTFChars( ). This function takes a Java String and
converts it to UTF-8 characters. (These are 8 bits wide to hold ASCII values or
16 bits wide to hold Unicode. If the content of the original string was composed
only of ASCII, the resulting string will be ASCII as well.)
GetStringUTFChars( ) is one
of the member functions in JNIEnv. To access the JNI function, we use the
typical C++ syntax for calling a member function though a pointer. You use the
form above to access all of the JNI
functions.
In the previous example we passed a
String to the native method. You can also pass Java objects of your own
creation to a native method. Inside your native method, you can access the
fields and methods of the object that was received.
To pass objects, use the ordinary Java
syntax when declaring the native method. In the example below,
MyJavaClass has one public field and one public method. The
class UseObjects declares a native method that takes an object of class
MyJavaClass. To see if the native method manipulates its argument, the
public field of the argument is set, the native method is called, and
then the value of the public field is printed.
//: appendixb:UseObjects.java class MyJavaClass { public int aValue; public void divByTwo() { aValue /= 2; } } public class UseObjects { private native void changeObject(MyJavaClass obj); static { System.loadLibrary("UseObjImpl"); // Linux hack, if you can't get your library // path set in your environment: // System.load( //"/home/bruce/tij2/appendixb/UseObjImpl.so"); } public static void main(String[] args) { UseObjects app = new UseObjects(); MyJavaClass anObj = new MyJavaClass(); anObj.aValue = 2; app.changeObject(anObj); System.out.println("Java: " + anObj.aValue); } } ///:~
After compiling the code and running
javah, you can implement the native method. In the example below, once
the field and method ID are obtained, they are accessed through JNI
functions.
//: appendixb:UseObjImpl.cpp //# Tested with VC++ & BC++. Include path must //# be adjusted to find the JNI headers. See //# the makefile for this chapter (in the //# downloadable source code) for an example. #include <jni.h> extern "C" JNIEXPORT void JNICALL Java_UseObjects_changeObject( JNIEnv* env, jobject, jobject obj) { jclass cls = env->GetObjectClass(obj); jfieldID fid = env->GetFieldID( cls, "aValue", "I"); jmethodID mid = env->GetMethodID( cls, "divByTwo", "()V"); int value = env->GetIntField(obj, fid); printf("Native: %d\n", value); env->SetIntField(obj, fid, 6); env->CallVoidMethod(obj, mid); value = env->GetIntField(obj, fid); printf("Native: %d\n", value); } ///:~
Ignoring the “this”
equivalent, the C++ function receives a jobject, which is the native side
of the Java object reference we pass from the Java code. We simply read
aValue, print it out, change the value, call the object’s
divByTwo( ) method, and print the value out again.
To access a Java field or method, you
must first obtain its identifier using GetFieldID( ) for fields and
GetMethodID( ) for methods. These functions take the class object, a
string containing the element name, and a string that gives type information:
the data type of the field, or signature information for a method (details can
be found in the JNI documentation). These functions return an identifier that
you use to access the element. This approach might seem convoluted, but your
native method has no knowledge of the internal layout of the Java object.
Instead, it must access fields and methods through indexes returned by the JVM.
This allows different JVMs to implement different internal object layouts with
no impact on your native methods.
If you run the Java program, you’ll
see that the object that’s passed from the Java side is manipulated by
your native method. But what exactly is passed? A pointer or a Java reference?
And what is the garbage collector doing during native method
calls?
The garbage
collector continues to operate during native method execution, but it’s
guaranteed that your objects will not be garbage-collected during a native
method call. To ensure this, local references are created before, and
destroyed right after, the native method call. Since their lifetime wraps the
call, you know that the objects will be valid throughout the native method
call.
Since these references are created and
subsequently destroyed every time the function is called, you cannot make local
copies in your native methods, in static variables. If you want a
reference that lasts across function invocations, you need a global reference.
Global references are not created by the JVM, but the programmer can make a
global reference out of a local one by calling specific JNI functions. When you
create a global reference, you become responsible for the lifetime of the
referenced object. The global reference (and the object it refers to) will be in
memory until the programmer explicitly frees the reference with the appropriate
JNI function. It’s similar to malloc( ) and
free( ) in C.
With JNI, Java
exceptions can be thrown, caught, printed, and rethrown just as they are inside
a Java program. But it’s up to the programmer to call dedicated JNI
functions to deal with exceptions. Here are the JNI functions for exception
handling:
Among these, you
can’t ignore ExceptionOccurred( ) and
ExceptionClear( ). Most JNI functions can generate exceptions, and
there is no language feature that you can use in place of a Java try block, so
you must call ExceptionOccurred( ) after each JNI function call to
see if an exception was thrown. If you detect an exception, you may choose to
handle it (and possibly rethrow it). You must make certain, however, that the
exception is eventually cleared. This can be done in your function using
ExceptionClear( ) or in some other function if the exception is
rethrown, but it must be done.
You must ensure that the exception is
cleared, because otherwise the results will be unpredictable if you call a JNI
function while an exception is pending. There are few JNI functions that are
safe to call during an exception; among these, of course, are all the exception
handling functions.
Since Java is a multithreaded language,
several threads can call a native method concurrently. (The native method might
be suspended in the middle of its operation when a second thread calls it.)
It’s entirely up to the programmer to guarantee that the native call is
thread-safe; i.e., it does not modify shared data in an unmonitored way.
Basically, you have two options: declare the native method as
synchronized, or implement some other strategy within the native method
to ensure correct, concurrent data manipulation.
Also, you should never pass the
JNIEnv pointer across threads, since the internal structure it points to
is allocated on a per-thread basis and contains information that makes sense
only in that particular thread.
The easiest way to implement JNI native
methods is to start writing native method prototypes in a Java class, compile
that class, and run the .class file through javah. But what if you
have a large, preexisting code base that you want to call from Java? Renaming
all the functions in your DLLs to match the JNI name mangling convention is not
a viable solution. The best approach is to write a wrapper DLL
“outside” your original code base. The Java code calls functions in
this new DLL, which in turn calls your original DLL functions. This solution is
not just a work-around; in most cases you must do this anyway because you must
call JNI functions on the object references before you can use
them.
You can find further introductory
material, including a C (rather than C++) example and discussion of Microsoft
issues, in Appendix A of the first edition of this book, which can be found on
the CD ROM bound in with this book, or in a free download from
www.BruceEckel.com. More extensive information is available at
java.sun.com (in the search engine, select “training &
tutorials” for keywords “native methods”). Chapter 11 of
Core Java 2, Volume II, by Horstmann & Cornell (Prentice-Hall,
2000) gives excellent coverage of native methods.