BSTR to std::string (std::wstring) and vice versa

Question

While working with COM in C++ the strings are usually of BSTR data type. Someone can use BSTR wrapper like CComBSTR or MS's CString . But because I can't use ATL or MFC in MinGW compiler, is there standard code snippet to convert BSTR to std::string (or std::wstring ) and vice versa?

Are there also some non-MS wrappers for BSTR similar to CComBSTR ?

Update

Thanks to everyone who helped me out in any way! Just because no one has addressed the issue on conversion between BSTR and std::string , I would like to provide here some clues on how to do it.

Below are the functions I use to convert BSTR to std::string and std::string to BSTR respectively:

std::string ConvertBSTRToMBS(BSTR bstr)
{
    int wslen = ::SysStringLen(bstr);
    return ConvertWCSToMBS((wchar_t*)bstr, wslen);
}

std::string ConvertWCSToMBS(const wchar_t* pstr, long wslen)
{
    int len = ::WideCharToMultiByte(CP_ACP, 0, pstr, wslen, NULL, 0, NULL, NULL);

    std::string dblstr(len, '\0');
    len = ::WideCharToMultiByte(CP_ACP, 0 /* no flags */,
                                pstr, wslen /* not necessary NULL-terminated */,
                                &dblstr[0], len,
                                NULL, NULL /* no default char */);

    return dblstr;
}

BSTR ConvertMBSToBSTR(const std::string& str)
{
    int wslen = ::MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0 /* no flags */,
                                      str.data(), str.length(),
                                      NULL, 0);

    BSTR wsdata = ::SysAllocStringLen(NULL, wslen);
    ::MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0 /* no flags */,
                          str.data(), str.length(),
                          wsdata, wslen);
    return wsdata;
}

Answer 1

BSTR to std::wstring :

// given BSTR bs
assert(bs != nullptr);
std::wstring ws(bs, SysStringLen(bs));

std::wstring to BSTR :

// given std::wstring ws
assert(!ws.empty());
BSTR bs = SysAllocStringLen(ws.data(), ws.size());

---

Doc refs:

1. std::basic_string<typename CharT>::basic_string(const CharT*, size_type)
2. std::basic_string<>::empty() const
3. std::basic_string<>::data() const
4. std::basic_string<>::size() const
5. SysStringLen()
6. SysAllocStringLen()

Answer 2

You could also do this

#include <comdef.h>

BSTR bs = SysAllocString("Hello");
std::wstring myString = _bstr_t(bs, false); // will take over ownership, so no need to free

or std::string if you prefer

EDIT: if your original string contains multiple embedded \0 this approach will not work.

Answer 3

There is a c++ class called _bstr_t . It has useful methods and a collection of overloaded operators.

For example, you can easily assign from a const wchar_t * or a const char * just doing _bstr_t bstr = L"My string"; Then you can convert it back doing const wchar_t * s = bstr.operator const wchar_t *(); . You can even convert it back to a regular char const char * c = bstr.operator char *(); You can then just use the const wchar_t * or the const char * to initialize a new std::wstring oe std::string .

Answer 4

Simply pass the BSTR directly to the wstring constructor, it is compatible with a wchar_t*:

BSTR btest = SysAllocString(L"Test");
assert(btest != NULL);
std::wstring wtest(btest);
assert(0 == wcscmp(wtest.c_str(), btest));

Converting BSTR to std::string requires a conversion to char* first. That's lossy since BSTR stores a utf-16 encoded Unicode string. Unless you want to encode in utf-8. You'll find helper methods to do this, as well as manipulate the resulting string, in the ICU library.