The Java Native Interface (JNI) allows you to call native functions from Java code, and vice versa. This example shows how to load and call a native function via JNI, it does not go into accessing Java methods and fields from native code using JNI functions.

Suppose you have a native library named libjniexample.so in the project/libs/<architecture> folder, and you want to call a function from the JNITestJava class inside the com.example.jniexample package.

In the JNITest class, declare the function like this:

public native int testJNIfunction(int a, int b);

In your native code, define the function like this:

#include <jni.h>

JNIEXPORT jint JNICALL Java_com_example_jniexample_JNITest_testJNIfunction(JNIEnv *pEnv, jobject thiz, jint a, jint b)
{
    return a + b;
}

The pEnv argument is a pointer to the JNI environment that you can pass to JNI functions to access methods and fields of Java objects and classes. The thiz pointer is a jobject reference to the Java object that the native method was called on (or the class if it is a static method).

In your Java code, in JNITest, load the library like this:

static{
    System.loadLibrary("jniexample");
}

Note the lib at the start, and the .so at the end of the filename are omitted.

Call the native function from Java like this:

JNITest test = new JNITest();
int c = test.testJNIfunction(3, 4);

The Java Native Interface (JNI) allows you to call Java functions from native code. Here is a simple example of how to do it:

Java code:

package com.example.jniexample;
public class JNITest {
    public static int getAnswer(bool) {
        return 42;
    }
}

Native code:

int getTheAnswer()
{
    // Get JNI environment
    JNIEnv *env = JniGetEnv();

    // Find the Java class - provide package ('.' replaced to '/') and class name
    jclass jniTestClass = env->FindClass("com/example/jniexample/JNITest");

    // Find the Java method - provide parameters inside () and return value (see table below for an explanation of how to encode them) 
    jmethodID getAnswerMethod = env->GetStaticMethodID(jniTestClass, "getAnswer", "(Z)I;");

    // Calling the method
    return (int)env->CallStaticObjectMethod(jniTestClass, getAnswerMethod, (jboolean)true);
}

JNI method signature to Java type:

JNI Signature	Java Type
Z	boolean
B	byte
C	char
S	short
I	int
J	long
F	float
D	double
L fully-qualified-class ;	fully-qualified-class
[ type	type[]

So for our example we used (Z)I - which means the function gets a boolean and returns an int.

This method will help to get the Java string from C++ string.

jstring getJavaStringFromCPPString(JNIEnv *global_env, const char* cstring) {

        jstring nullString = global_env->NewStringUTF(NULL);

        if (!cstring) {
            return nullString;
        }

        jclass strClass = global_env->FindClass("java/lang/String");
        jmethodID ctorID = global_env->GetMethodID(strClass, "<init>",
                "([BLjava/lang/String;)V");
        jstring encoding = global_env->NewStringUTF("UTF-8");

        jbyteArray bytes = global_env->NewByteArray(strlen(cstring));
        global_env->SetByteArrayRegion(bytes, 0, strlen(cstring), (jbyte*) cstring);
        jstring str = (jstring) global_env->NewObject(strClass, ctorID, bytes,
                encoding);

        global_env->DeleteLocalRef(strClass);
        global_env->DeleteLocalRef(encoding);
        global_env->DeleteLocalRef(bytes);

        return str;
    }

This method will help you to convert jbyteArray to char

char* as_unsigned_char_array(JNIEnv *env, jbyteArray array) {
    jsize length = env->GetArrayLength(array);
    jbyte* buffer = new jbyte[length + 1];

    env->GetByteArrayRegion(array, 0, length, buffer);
    buffer[length] = '\0';

    return (char*) buffer;
}