GCHandle Structure

The GCHandle structure is used with the GCHandleType enumeration to create a handle corresponding to any managed object. This handle can be one of four types: Weak, WeakTrackResurrection, Normal, or Pinned. When the handle has been allocated, you can use it to prevent the managed object from being collected by the garbage collector when an unmanaged client holds the only reference. Without such a handle, the object can be collected by the garbage collector before completing its work on behalf of the unmanaged client.

You can also use GCHandle to create a pinned object that returns a memory address to prevent the garbage collector from moving the object in memory.

When the handle goes out of scope you must explicitly release it by calling the Free method; otherwise, memory leaks may occur. When you free a pinned handle, the associated object will be unpinned and will become eligible for garbage collection, if there are no other references to it.

The following example shows an App class that creates a handle to a managed object using the GCHandle.Alloc method, which prevents the managed object from being collected. A call to the EnumWindows method passes a delegate and a managed object (both declared as managed types, but not shown), and casts the handle to an IntPtr. The unmanaged function passes the type back to the caller as a parameter of the callback function.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Security.Permissions;

public delegate bool CallBack(int handle, IntPtr param);

public class LibWrap
{
	// passing managed object as LPARAM
	// BOOL EnumWindows(WNDENUMPROC lpEnumFunc, LPARAM lParam);

	[DllImport("user32.dll")]
	public static extern bool EnumWindows(CallBack cb, IntPtr param);
}

public class App
{
	public static void Main()
	{
		Run();
	}

        [SecurityPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, UnmanagedCode=true)]
	public static void Run()
        {
		TextWriter tw = System.Console.Out;
		GCHandle gch = GCHandle.Alloc(tw);

		CallBack cewp = new CallBack(CaptureEnumWindowsProc);

		// platform invoke will prevent delegate to be garbage collected
		// before call ends

		LibWrap.EnumWindows(cewp, GCHandle.ToIntPtr(gch));
		gch.Free();
        }

	private static bool CaptureEnumWindowsProc(int handle, IntPtr param)
	{
		GCHandle gch = GCHandle.FromIntPtr(param);
		TextWriter tw = (TextWriter)gch.Target;
		tw.WriteLine(handle);
		return true;
	}
}

.NET Framework

.NET Framework Client Profile

Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1 or later, Windows XP SP3, Windows XP SP2 x64 Edition, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core supported with SP1 or later), Windows Server 2003 SP2

Reference

Other Resources