Accessing dynamically loaded DLL (with LoadLibrary) in Visual Basic 6 - windows

Question

I have a need to create a wrapper for a DLL, loading and unloading it as needed (for those interested in the background of this question, see How to work around memory-leaking 3rd party DLL (no source code) accessed by Tomcat application?) . I'm doing it in Visual Basic 6, and the loading and unloading with the following example works:
Private Declare Function FreeLibrary Lib "kernel32" (ByVal hLibModule As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function LoadLibrary Lib "kernel32" Alias "LoadLibraryA" (ByVal lpLibFileName As String) As Long
Private Sub cmdTestLoadingDLL_Click()
Dim lb As Long, pa As Long
lb = LoadLibrary("D:\projects\other\VB_DLLs\TestDLL\TestDLL.dll")
Msgbox "Library address: " + lb
FreeLibrary lb
End Sub
I can see using Process Explorer that the DLL is loaded to memory when the messagebox is displayed, and is discarded afterwards. However, calling the method is naturally not enough - I need to access the methods within the dynamically loaded DLL.
How can I achieve this? I would like to call the method getVersion in class mainClass, which is in TestDLL, like this:
Private Declare Function FreeLibrary Lib "kernel32" (ByVal hLibModule As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function LoadLibrary Lib "kernel32" Alias "LoadLibraryA" (ByVal lpLibFileName As String) As Long
Private Sub cmdTestLoadingDLL_Click()
Dim lb As Long, pa As Long
Dim versionString As String
lb = LoadLibrary("D:\projects\other\VB_DLLs\TestDLL\TestDLL.dll")
versionString = "- From DLL: " + mainClass.getVersion
MsgBox versionString
FreeLibrary lb
End Sub
However, the line
versionString = "- From DLL: " + mainClass.getVersion
throws an error "Object required".

Answer 1

First of all, since you are calling it via LoadLibrary, there are no classes here - only functions are exported for public consumption. So your mainClass reference would never work. Let's assume you have a function getVersion that is exported.
I would try the following:
Private Declare Function FreeLibrary Lib "kernel32" (ByVal hLibModule As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function LoadLibrary Lib "kernel32" Alias "LoadLibraryA" (ByVal lpLibFileName As String) As Long
Private Declare Function GetProcAddress Lib "kernel32" (ByVal hModule As Long, ByVal lpProcName As String) As Long
Private Declare Function CallWindowProc Lib "user32" Alias "CallWindowProcA" (ByVal lpPrevWndFunc As Long, ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal Msg As Any, ByVal wParam As Any, ByVal lParam As Any) As Long
Private Sub Foo
On Error Resume Next
Dim lb As Long, pa As Long
Dim versionString As String
Dim retValue as Long
lb = LoadLibrary("D:\projects\other\VB_DLLs\TestDLL\TestDLL.dll")
'retrieve the address of getVersion'
pa = GetProcAddress(lb, "getVersion")
'Call the getVersion function'
retValue = CallWindowProc (pa, Me.hWnd, "I want my version", ByVal 0&, ByVal 0&)
'release the library'
FreeLibrary lb
End Sub

Answer 2

Do you need to call COM methods on this DLL? If so, I'm not at all sure this is possible.
Matthew Curland's excellent Advanced Visual Basic 6 is the first place I'd look, though. There's some powerful under-the-hood COM stuff in there that circumvents the normal VB6 techniques.
There's also DirectCom, which allows you to call COM methods without using COM. Never used it myself, but people chat about it on the VB6 newsgroup.