Crate dolphin 

Dolphin

A lightweight and safe Rust FFI library for dynamically loading and invoking functions from shared libraries (.dll, .so, .dylib).

Features

• Dynamic loading of functions from any shared library at runtime
• Safe API wrapping unsafe FFI calls
• Pre-load function addresses for zero-overhead repeated calls
• Cross-platform support (Windows, Linux, macOS)

Quick Start

use dolphin::load_and_invoke;

// Call a C function with a string
let message = "Hello from Rust!";
load_and_invoke("./mylib.dylib", "print_message", message.as_bytes())
    .expect("Failed to call function");

// Call with integer array
let numbers = vec![10, 20, 30, 40, 50];
load_and_invoke("./mylib.dylib", "calculate_sum", &numbers)
    .expect("Failed to call function");

High-Performance Pattern

For repeated calls, pre-load the function once:

use dolphin::{load, invoke};

// Load once
let print_addr = load("./mylib.dylib", "print_message")
    .expect("Failed to load function");

// Invoke many times with zero loading overhead
for i in 0..1000 {
    let msg = format!("Message {}", i);
    invoke(print_addr, msg.as_bytes()).ok();
}

Functions

invoke

Invokes a pre-loaded function using its memory address.

invoke_with_return

Invokes a pre-loaded function that returns a value.

load

Loads a function from a shared library and returns its memory address.

load_and_invoke

Loads a function from a shared library and executes it with the given arguments.

load_and_invoke_with_return

Loads a function from a shared library, executes it, and returns a value.

load_with_return

Loads a function that returns a value from a shared library.