How to Handle an 'ArrayList' from c# to PowerBuilder

Question

Hello I have created a DLL from c# with a function that returns an ArrayList, and now I am trying to call it in my PowerBuilder app. How can I handle the returned ArrayList from the DLL in my PowerBuilder App? Or are there other ways than using an ArrayList? Thanks in advance.

Here is my c# code

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO.Ports;
using System.Management;

namespace GetPorts
{
 public class Class1
 {
    public ArrayList getPortNames()
    {
        ArrayList com_port_name = new ArrayList();

        using (var searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM WIN32_SerialPort"))
        {
            string[] portnames = SerialPort.GetPortNames();
            var ports = searcher.Get().Cast<ManagementBaseObject>().ToList();
            var tList = (from n in portnames join p in ports on n equals p["DeviceID"].ToString() select n + " - " + p["Caption"]).ToList();

            foreach (string s in tList)
            {
                com_port_name.Add(s);
            }
        }
        return com_port_name;
    }
  }
}

Answer 1

Assuming this will be a COM visible component one thing you could try in Powerbuilder is to bring the returned string array into an 'any' variable (or perhaps an array of any variables

Like:

any lany[]
lany = <com_componenet_name>.getportnames()

When I've done stuff like this for images, I set up an attribute on the class to hold the return value (in your case a string array), exposed it via COM, called the method to set its value, then referenced it directly from Powerbuilder.

Like:

any lany[]
string ls[]
<com_component_name>.getportnames() //set the portnames attribute
lany = <com_component_name>.portnames()
ls = la
// now use the string array in Powerbuilder