How do I point a Lumia::Imaging::Bitmap at a byte buffer in C++?

For some context, we have a Visual Studio solution that has three projects. The main project is a C# application, we have a C++ library that is essentially an image rendering pipeline, and we have a c++/cx WinRT component as the bridge between the two.

We are offloading some of our image filter chains (in the C++ library) to the Lumia Imaging SDK in the c++/cx WinRT project. Since we are working with byte buffers, we were unsure as to how to point a Lumia::Imaging::Bitmap^ at our buffers without doing a copy. (We can't call AsBuffer() on the uchar* (i.e., our byte array) because that extension method is unavailable to us in C++ land.)

So the question is this: given an input uchar* to some method that will implement a Lumia filter chain, how do we create a Bitmap (or BitmapImageSource) that doesn't result in copying the buffer?

Here is some sample code that we need to fill in the blanks on:

Bitmap^ MyClass::GetBitmapImageDestination(uchar *imageBytes, int imageWidth, int imageHeight, ColorMode colorMode) {
    int channels = colorMode == ColorMode::Gray8 ? 1 : 4;

    IBuffer^ byteBuffer = ..... ????

    return ref new Bitmap(Windows::Foundation::Size((float)imageWidth, (float)imageHeight), colorMode, (uint)(imageWidth * channels), byteBuffer); 
}

Ok, so here was some hacking around we did that does not achieve what we need, because it creates a copy:

Bitmap^ MyClass::GetBitmapImageDestination(uchar *imageBytes, int imageWidth, int imageHeight, ColorMode colorMode) {
    int channels = colorMode == ColorMode::Gray8 ? 1 : 4;

    DataWriter^ writer = ref new DataWriter();
    Platform::ArrayReference<uchar, 1> tempArray(imageBytes, imageWidth * imageHeight * 4);
    writer->WriteBytes(tempArray);
    IBuffer^ byteBuffer = writer->DetachBuffer();   

    return ref new Bitmap(Windows::Foundation::Size((float)imageWidth, (float)imageHeight), colorMode, (uint)(imageWidth * channels), byteBuffer);
}

But after some thought, we decided to try subclassing IBuffer with our own implementation. Kudos to jmorrill for his help on this post on MSDN:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/816e5718-224d-4bb7-bf06-230e9c6cda5b/how-to-create-an-ibuffer-from-scratch?forum=winappswithnativecode

Here is our implementation of IBuffer:

class ImageBuffer : public Microsoft::WRL::RuntimeClass<
                           Microsoft::WRL::RuntimeClassFlags< Microsoft::WRL::RuntimeClassType::WinRtClassicComMix >,
                           ABI::Windows::Storage::Streams::IBuffer,
                           Windows::Storage::Streams::IBufferByteAccess >
    {

    public:
        virtual ~ImageBuffer()
        {
        }

        STDMETHODIMP RuntimeClassInitialize(UINT totalSize, UCHAR* data)
        {
            _imageLength = totalSize;
            _imageData = data;
            return S_OK;
        }

        STDMETHODIMP Buffer( byte **value)
        {
            *value = &_imageData[0];
            return S_OK;
        }

         STDMETHODIMP get_Capacity(UINT32 *value)
         {
             *value = _imageLength;
             return S_OK;
         }

        STDMETHODIMP get_Length(UINT32 *value)
        {
            *value = _imageLength;
            return S_OK;
        }

        STDMETHODIMP put_Length(UINT32 value)
        {
            if(value > _imageLength)
                return E_INVALIDARG;
            _imageLength = value;
            return S_OK;
        }
    private:
        UINT32 _imageLength;
        UCHAR *_imageData;
};

And we use interop do create the ImageBuffer instance:

Bitmap^ MyClass::GetBitmapImageDestination(uchar *imageBytes, int imageWidth, int imageHeight, ColorMode colorMode) {
    int channels = colorMode == ColorMode::Gray8 ? 1 : 4;

    ComPtr<ImageBuffer> imageBuffer;
    MakeAndInitialize<ImageBuffer>(&imageBuffer, imageWidth * imageHeight * channels, imageBytes);
    auto iinspectable = (IInspectable*)reinterpret_cast<IInspectable*>(imageBuffer.Get());
    IBuffer^ byteBuffer = reinterpret_cast<IBuffer^>(iinspectable);

    return ref new Bitmap(Windows::Foundation::Size((float)imageWidth, (float)imageHeight), colorMode, (uint)(imageWidth * channels), byteBuffer);
}

Hope this is of help to someone!