[Haskell-beginners] FFI Problems

Sylvain Henry hsyl20 at gmail.com
Mon Mar 2 15:20:00 UTC 2015


Hi,

1) You have a copy-paste error on the following line (s/bitrate/track)
 track <- ((#peek struct music_metadata, bitrate) a) :: IO Int

2) By looking at the values you get in hexadecimal, you are reading 64bits
values when your C struct contains 32 bits values. If you use: peek ... ::
IO Int32, it should be ok.

3) From a style point of view, you could use Applicative operators (from
Control.Applicative) to avoid temporary names:
peek a = MusicMetaData
        <$> liftM constantToCodec $ (((#peek struct music_metadata, codec)
a) :: IO Int32)
        <*> fmap fromIntegral (((#peek struct music_metadata, length) a) ::
IO Int32)
        <*> fmap fromIntegral (((#peek struct music_metadata, bitrate) a)
:: IO Int32)
        <*> fmap fromIntegral (((#peek struct music_metadata, channels) a)
:: IO Int32)
        <*> fmap fromIntegral (((#peek struct music_metadata, track) a) ::
IO Int32)
        <*> (peekCString =<< (#peek struct music_metadata, title) a)
        ...

4) In your constantToCodec function, you don't need the temporary names for
all the constants.

Best regards,
Sylvain

PS : recently I have been working on rewriting the FFI page on the wiki to
make it more beginner-friendly ;-). It is not totally finished but I'm open
to any comment. https://www.haskell.org/wiki/Foreign_Function_Interface

2015-02-28 14:20 GMT+01:00 Thomas Jakway <tjakway at nyu.edu>:

>  I'm very new to Haskell and am trying to write a "real" program to
> motivate myself to learn it better (so far I've only gotten through Project
> Euler problems after reading LYAH and most of RWH).  I'm using Taglib (
> https://github.com/taglib/taglib) to read the metadata from a music file
> and print it.  I have a struct C-side (with C linkage) serving as the
> bridge between Taglib's C++ and Haskell's FFI.  A small demo program
> (compiled with gcc and linked against the C++ object files) gives the
> correct results, but Haskell is weirdly only getting *some *of it right.
> Specifically, the C string fields are working but ints are not.
>
> The output from the C demo (what Haskell should be printing):
>
> music_metadata
> title: It's My Life,    artist: Bon Jovi,    album: Bon Jovi Greatest Hits
> - The Ultimate Collection
> comment: ,    genre: Rock,    track: 3,
> length: 224,    bitrate: 256,    channels: 2,
> codec: 768
>
> The output from Haskell:
>
> MusicMetadata {codec = UNKNOWN, length = 1099511628000, bitrate =
> 8589934848, channels = 12884901890, track = 8589934848, title = "It's My
> Life", artist = "Bon Jovi", album = "Bon Jovi Greatest Hits - The Ultimate
> Collection", comment = "", genre = "Rock"}
>
> I would have expected it to work or not work at all, but did not
> anticipate getting only some of it right.
>
> I was going to include snippets from my hsc file but given how new I am to
> Haskell I don't trust myself to assume where the problem is, so sorry if
> this is way too long:
>
> {-# LANGUAGE CPP, ForeignFunctionInterface #-}
>
> module MusicReader
> ( Codec,
>   MusicMetadata,
>   readMusicMetadata
> ) where
>
> import Control.Monad
> import Foreign
> import Foreign.C.Types
> import Foreign.C.String
> import System.IO.Unsafe as Unsafe
>
> #include "CodecDefines.h"
> #include "MusicReader.h"
>
> constantToCodec code
>                     | code == mp3 = MP3
>                     | code == flac = FLAC
>                     | code == ogg = OGG_VORBIS
>                     | code == mp4 = MP4
>                     | code == mpeg = MPEG
>                     | code == none = NONE
>                     | code == unknown = UNKNOWN
>                     | otherwise = UNKNOWN
>                        where mp3 = #const MP3_CODEC
>                              flac = #const FLAC_CODEC
>                              ogg = #const OGG_VORBIS_CODEC
>                              mp4 = #const MP4_CODEC
>                              mpeg = #const MPEG_CODEC
>                              none = #const NO_EXTENSION
>                              unknown = #const UNKNOWN_EXTENSION
>
> data Codec = MP3 | FLAC | OGG_VORBIS | MP4 | MPEG | NONE | UNKNOWN
> deriving (Show)
>
> data MusicMetadata = MusicMetadata { codec :: Codec,
>                       length :: Int,
>                       bitrate :: Int,
>                       channels :: Int,
>                       track :: Int,
>                       title :: String,
>                       artist :: String,
>                       album :: String,
>                       comment :: String,
>                       genre :: String } deriving (Show)
>
> instance Storable MusicMetadata where
>     sizeOf _ = (#size struct music_metadata)
>     alignment _ = alignment (undefined::CDouble)
>     peek a = do
>         codec <- liftM constantToCodec $ (((#peek struct music_metadata,
> codec) a) :: IO Int)
>         length <- ((#peek struct music_metadata, length) a) :: IO Int
>         bitrate <- ((#peek struct music_metadata, bitrate) a) :: IO Int
>         channels <- ((#peek struct music_metadata, channels) a) :: IO Int
>         track <- ((#peek struct music_metadata, bitrate) a) :: IO Int
>         title <-  ((#peek struct music_metadata, title) a) :: IO CString
>         artist <- ((#peek struct music_metadata, artist) a) :: IO CString
>         album <- ((#peek struct music_metadata, album) a) :: IO CString
>         comment <- ((#peek struct music_metadata, comment) a) :: IO CString
>         genre <- ((#peek struct music_metadata, genre) a) :: IO CString
>         --FIXME: find replacement for temporary names
>         marshalledTitle <- peekCString title
>         marshalledArtist <- peekCString artist
>         marshalledAlbum <- peekCString album
>         marshalledComment <- peekCString comment
>         marshalledGenre <- peekCString genre
>         return (MusicMetadata codec length bitrate channels track
> marshalledTitle marshalledArtist marshalledAlbum marshalledComment
> marshalledGenre)
>     poke a = undefined
>
> --This is the "primitive" FFI call--calls the C function and gets a pointer
> --in return
> --TODO: write a higher level function this module should export that calls
> --primReadMusicMetadata and converts the C Pointer into the Haskell data
> --MusicMetadata
> foreign import ccall unsafe "read_metadata" primReadMusicMetadata ::
> CString -> IO (Ptr MusicMetadata)
>
> --convert the Haskell string to a CString, call into the FFI then
> --dereference the resulting pointer
> readMusicMetadata a = join $ withCString a $ \cs -> ((liftM peek) $
> primReadMusicMetadata cs)
>
>
>
> Here's the struct in MusicReader.h (in an extern C block):
>     struct music_metadata
>     {
>         int codec;
>         int length,
>                 bitrate,
>                 channels;
>         int track;
>         char *title,
>              *artist,
>              *album,
>              *comment,
>              *genre;
>     };
>
>
> with the corresponding call:
>     struct music_metadata* read_metadata(char*);
>
>
> I've tried playing around with the alignment but it didn't do anything.  I
> also tried declaring the struct's fields as int32_t which also did nothing.
>
> The C demo in question is a very simple:
>
> #include <stdio.h>
> #include "MusicReader.h"
>
> #define FILENAME "Its_My_Life.m4a"
>
> int main()
> {
>     struct music_metadata* metadata = read_metadata(FILENAME);
>     printf("music_metadata\ntitle: %s,\tartist: %s,\talbum: %s\n",
>             metadata->title, metadata->artist, metadata->album);
>     printf("comment: %s,\tgenre: %s,\ttrack: %d,\n",
>             metadata->comment, metadata->genre, metadata->track);
>     printf("length: %d,\tbitrate: %d,\tchannels: %d,\n",
>             metadata->length, metadata->bitrate, metadata->channels);
>     printf("codec: %d\n");
>
> }
>
> It just reads the metadata into the struct and prints the fields.
>
> I've gotten the impression of the Haskell FFI being very
> beginner-unfriendly, which isn't surprising but still disappointing because
> it would be a great opportunity to replace some projects with Haskell.
>
> Any help is appreciated, including general feedback on my code!
>
> _______________________________________________
> Beginners mailing list
> Beginners at haskell.org
> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beginners
>
>
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