A port driver is a linked in driver that is accessible as a port from an Erlang program. It is a shared library (SO in Unix, DLL in Windows), with special entry points. The Erlang runtime calls these entry points, when the driver is started and when data is sent to the port. The port driver can also send data to Erlang.

Since a port driver is dynamically linked into the emulator process, this is the fastest way of calling C-code from Erlang. Calling functions in the port driver requires no context switches. But it is also the least safe, because a crash in the port driver brings the emulator down too.

Just as with a port program, the port communicates with a Erlang process. All communication goes through one Erlang process that is the connected process of the port driver. Terminating this process closes the port driver.

Before the port is created, the driver must be loaded. This is done with the function erl_dll:load_driver/1, with the name of the shared library as argument.

The port is then created using the BIF open_port/2 with the tuple {spawn, DriverName} as the first argument. The string SharedLib is the name of the port driver. The second argument is a list of options, none in this case.

-module(complex5).
-export([start/1, init/1]).

start(SharedLib) ->
    case erl_ddll:load_driver(".", SharedLib) of
        ok -> ok;
        {error, already_loaded} -> ok;
        _ -> exit({error, could_not_load_driver})
    end,
    spawn(?MODULE, init, [SharedLib]).

init(SharedLib) ->
  register(complex, self()),
  Port = open_port({spawn, SharedLib}, []),
  loop(Port).

Now it is possible to implement complex5:foo/1 and complex5:bar/1. They both send a message to the complex process and receive the reply.

foo(X) ->
    call_port({foo, X}).
bar(Y) ->
    call_port({bar, Y}).

call_port(Msg) ->
    complex ! {call, self(), Msg},
    receive
        {complex, Result} ->
            Result
    end.

The complex process encodes the message into a sequence of bytes, sends it to the port, waits for a reply, decodes the reply and sends it back to the caller.

loop(Port) ->
    receive
        {call, Caller, Msg} ->
            Port ! {self(), {command, encode(Msg)}},
            receive
                {Port, {data, Data}} ->
                    Caller ! {complex, decode(Data)}
            end,
            loop(Port)
    end.

Assuming that both the arguments and the results from the C functions will be less than 256, a very simple encoding/decoding scheme is employed where foo is represented by the byte 1, bar is represented by 2, and the argument/result is represented by a single byte as well.

encode({foo, X}) -> [1, X];
encode({bar, Y}) -> [2, Y].
      
decode([Int]) -> Int.

The resulting Erlang program, including functionality for stopping the port and detecting port failures is shown below.

The C driver is a module that is compiled and linked into a shared library. It uses a driver structure, and includes the header file erl_driver.h.

The driver structure is filled with the driver name and function pointers. It is returned from the special entry point, declared with the macro )]]>.

The functions for receiving and sending data, are combined into a function, pointed out by the driver structure. The data sent into the port is given as arguments, and the data the port sends back is sent with the C-function driver_output.

Since the driver is a shared module, not a program, no main function should be present. All function pointers are not used in our example, and the corresponding fields in the driver_entry structure are set to NULL.

All functions in the driver, takes a handle (returned from start), that is just passed along by the erlang process. This must in some way refer to the port driver instance.

The example_drv_start, is the only function that is called with a handle to the port instance, so we must save this. It is customary to use a allocated driver-defined structure for this one, and pass a pointer back as a reference.

It is not a good idea to use a global variable; since the port driver can be spawned by multiple Erlang processes, this driver-structure should be instantiated multiple times.

1. Compile the C code.

unix> gcc -o exampledrv -fpic -shared complex.c port_driver.c
windows> cl -LD -MD -Fe exampledrv.dll complex.c port_driver.c

2. Start Erlang and compile the Erlang code.

> erl
Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.1

Eshell V5.1 (abort with ^G)
1> c(complex5).
{ok,complex5}

3. Run the example.

2> complex5:start("example_drv").
<0.34.0>
3> complex5:foo(3).
4
4> complex5:bar(5).
10
5> complex5:stop().
stop