Calling C Functions from Python

We can call a C function from Python program using the ctypes module.

Calling C Function from Python

It involves the following steps:

1. Creating a C file (.c extension) with the required functions
2. Creating a shared library file (.so extension) using the C compiler.
3. In the Python program, create a ctypes.CDLL instance from the shared file.
4. Finally, call the C function using the format {CDLL_instance}.{function_name}({function_parameters}).

Step 1: Creating a C File with some functions

#include <stdio.h>

int square(int i) {
	return i * i;
}

We have a simple C function that will return the square of an integer. I have saved this function code in the file named my_functions.c.

Step 2: Creating the Shared Library File

We can use the following command to create the shared library file from the C source file.

$ cc -fPIC -shared -o my_functions.so my_functions.c

C File and Shared Library File

Step 3: Calling C Function from Python Program

>>> from ctypes import *
>>> so_file = "/Users/pankaj/my_functions.so"
>>> my_functions = CDLL(so_file)
>>> 
>>> print(type(my_functions))
<class 'ctypes.CDLL'>
>>> 
>>> print(my_functions.square(10))
100
>>> print(my_functions.square(8))
64
>>> 

Calling C Function From Python

If you change the C program file, you will have to regenerate the shared library file.

Conclusion

The python default implementation is written in C programming and it’s called CPython. So it’s not very uncommon to use C functions in a python program. In this tutorial, we learned how to easily call C functions in a python program.