Getting ordinal from function name programmatically

Question

What's the easiest way in C++ to get an ordinal of an exported dll function, given its name? (Looking for a way which doesn't invlove parsing the IATs myself...)

Answer 1

I can't think of any terribly simple way to do what you want. You have at least a couple of options that I can see:

1. Take the route given by Mark, though it does seem a bit kludgy and may have some shortcomings.
2. Use the Name Pointer Table (NPT) and Export Ordinal Table (EOT) to find export ordinals.

The main problem I see with the first option is that you don't know how many ordinals to try (there can be gaps in the ordinal numbers, so counting on GetProcAddress returning NULL to signal the end won't work). It's also somewhat inefficient because it requires making a lot of Win32 calls repeatedly and it basically amounts to a linear search of the export address table. Pretty inelegant, indeed.

As an alternative, you can search the NPT and use the resultant index into the EOT to obtain an ordinal. This is a more elegant approach because it arrives at the ordinal in the most direct way possible (it is actually the same method the dynamic linker uses to resolve export names to their addresses). Also, because the NPT is lexically sorted, it's possible to do a binary search which is obviously preferable to the other method's linear search. In fact, a single call to GetProcOrdinal implemented with this method should be slightly faster than just one call to GetProcAddress. Perhaps more importantly, this method doesn't depend on any unknowns (i.e. number of ordinals). The disadvantage to this method is that it's not as simple as the other method.

You could use the Debug Help Library to help avoid doing some of the parsing of the PE file image (this is what I did initially), but it turns out that parsing the required parts of the PE image is not that difficult. I think avoiding the dependency on the Debug Help Library is worth the minimal extra effort required to parse the PE image headers.

Getting down to business, here is an example implementation in C:

#include <stdio.h>

#include "windows.h"

/// Efficiently searches a module's name pointer table (NPT) for the named
/// procedure.
///
/// @param[in] npt     Address of the NPT to search.
///
/// @param[in] size    Number of entries in the NPT.
///
/// @param[in] base    Base address of the module containing the NPT. This is
///                    used to resolve addresses in the NPT (which are relative
///                    to the module's base address).
///
/// @param[in] proc    String containing the name of the procedure to search
///                    for.
///
/// @return    Returns the index into the NPT of the entry matching the named
///            procedure. If no such matching entry exists, the function returns
///            -1.
///
DWORD FindNptProc (PDWORD npt, DWORD size, PBYTE base, LPCSTR proc)
{
    INT   cmp;
    DWORD max;
    DWORD mid;
    DWORD min;

    min = 0;
    max = size - 1;

    while (min <= max) {
        mid = (min + max) >> 1;
        cmp = strcmp((LPCSTR)(npt[mid] + base), proc);
        if (cmp < 0) {
            min = mid + 1;
        } else if (cmp > 0) {
            max = mid - 1;
        } else {
            return mid;
        }
    }

    return -1;
}

/// Gets a pointer to a module's export directory table (EDT).
///
/// @param[in] module    Handle to the module (as returned by GetModuleHandle).
///
/// @return    Returns a pointer to the module's EDT. If there is an error (e.g.
///            if the module handle is invalid or the module has no EDT) the
///            function will return NULL.
///
PIMAGE_EXPORT_DIRECTORY GetExportDirectoryTable (HMODULE module)
{
    PBYTE                   base; // base address of module
    PIMAGE_FILE_HEADER      cfh;  // COFF file header
    PIMAGE_EXPORT_DIRECTORY edt;  // export directory table (EDT)
    DWORD                   rva;  // relative virtual address of EDT
    PIMAGE_DOS_HEADER       mds;  // MS-DOS stub
    PIMAGE_OPTIONAL_HEADER  oh;   // so-called "optional" header
    PDWORD                  sig;  // PE signature

    // Start at the base of the module. The MS-DOS stub begins there.
    base = (PBYTE)module;
    mds = (PIMAGE_DOS_HEADER)module;

    // Get the PE signature and verify it.
    sig = (DWORD *)(base + mds->e_lfanew);
    if (IMAGE_NT_SIGNATURE != *sig) {
        // Bad signature -- invalid image or module handle
        return NULL;
    }

    // Get the COFF file header.
    cfh = (PIMAGE_FILE_HEADER)(sig + 1);

    // Get the "optional" header (it's not actually optional for executables).
    oh = (PIMAGE_OPTIONAL_HEADER)(cfh + 1);

    // Finally, get the export directory table.
    if (IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_EXPORT >= oh->NumberOfRvaAndSizes) {
        // This image doesn't have an export directory table.
        return NULL;
    }
    rva = oh->DataDirectory[IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_EXPORT].VirtualAddress;
    edt = (PIMAGE_EXPORT_DIRECTORY)(base + rva);

    return edt;
}

/// Gets the ordinal of an exported procedure.
///
/// @param[in] module    Handle (as returned by GetModuleHandle) of the module
///                      that exports the procedure.
///
/// @param[in] proc      String containing the name of the procedure.
///
/// @return    Returns the procedure's ordinal. If an ordinal for the procedure
///            could not be located (e.g. if the named procedure is not exported
///            by the specified module) then the function will return -1.
///
DWORD GetProcOrdinal (HMODULE module, LPCSTR proc)
{
    PBYTE                   base; // module base address
    PIMAGE_EXPORT_DIRECTORY edt;  // export directory table (EDT)
    PWORD                   eot;  // export ordinal table (EOT)
    DWORD                   i;    // index into NPT and/or EOT
    PDWORD                  npt;  // name pointer table (NPT)

    base = (PBYTE)module;

    // Get the export directory table, from which we can find the name pointer
    // table and export ordinal table.
    edt = GetExportDirectoryTable(module);

    // Get the name pointer table and search it for the named procedure.
    npt = (DWORD *)(base + edt->AddressOfNames);
    i = FindNptProc(npt, edt->NumberOfNames, base, proc);
    if (-1 == i) {
        // The procedure was not found in the module's name pointer table.
        return -1;
    }

    // Get the export ordinal table.
    eot = (WORD *)(base + edt->AddressOfNameOrdinals);

    // Actual ordinal is ordinal from EOT plus "ordinal base" from EDT.
    return eot[i] + edt->Base;
}

int main (int argc, char *argv [])
{
    LPCSTR  procName;
    HMODULE module = NULL;
    LPCSTR  moduleName;
    DWORD   ordinal;

    if (argc != 3) {
        printf("A DLL name and procedure name must be specified\n");
        return EXIT_FAILURE;
    }

    moduleName = argv[1];
    procName   = argv[2];

    if (NULL == LoadLibrary(moduleName)) {
        printf("Could not load library %s\n", moduleName);
        return EXIT_FAILURE;
    }

    module = GetModuleHandle(moduleName);
    if (NULL == module) {
        printf("Couldn't get a handle to %s\n", moduleName);
        return EXIT_FAILURE;
    }

    ordinal = GetProcOrdinal(module, procName);
    if (-1 == ordinal) {
        printf("Could not find ordinal for %s in %s\n", procName, moduleName);
    } else {
        printf("Found %s at ordinal %d\n", procName, ordinal);
    }

    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

GetProcOrdinal is where the interesting bits happen. The code is hopefully fairly self-explanatory; however, to fully understand it may require a bit of knowledge about the PE file format, which I'm not about to get into here (there's plenty of info on the web about it). FindNptProc is simply a convenience function that does the binary search of the NPT. GetExportDirectoryTable is another convenience function that parses the PE headers to locate the export directory table.

The code above compiles cleanly for me under Visual Studio 2008 and Windows XP (SP3), but YMMV. I'm not really a Windows guy*, so this might not be the cleanest code portability-wise (in terms of different versions of Windows). As usual, this code is provided "as is" with no warranty of any kind ;)

*Yes, in case you're wondering, I do still feel kind of dirty after writing all that Microsoft-style Windows code.

Answer 2

An ugly way would be to run a system call with a dumpbin command and parse the output. But that has about the same elegance as a bull in the proverbial china shop.

dumpbin /exports c:\windows\system32\user32.dll | grep FunctionOfInterest

Otherwise, you could write a simple loop calling GetProcAddress with ordinals (passed in the low two bytes of the name parameter). When the function pointer matches the pointer returned when passing the actual name, then you are done.

Here is the basic idea without error checking:

  HANDLE hMod;
  HANDLE byname, byord;
  int ord;

  hMod = LoadLibrary( "user32.dll" );
  byname = GetProcAddress( hMod, "GetWindow" );
  byord = 0;
  ord = 1;
  while ( 1 ) {
     byord = GetProcAddress( hMod, (LPCSTR)ord );
     if ( byord == byname ) {
        printf( "ord = %d\n", ord );
        break;
        }
     ord++;
     }