Converting a String to UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt16> - swift

Question

I'm trying to use a library which was written in C. I've imported .a and .h files at Xcode project, and checked it works properly. I've already made them working on Objective-C, and now for Swift.
A problem I've got is functions' arguments. There's a function requires an argument widechar(defined as typedef Unsigned short int in Library), which was UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt16> in Swift. The function translates it and return the result.
So I should convert a String to UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt16>. I tried to find the right way to converting it, but I've only got converting it to UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt8>. I couldn't find answer/information about converting String to UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt16>.
Here's a source code I've written.
extension String{
var utf8CString: UnsafePointer<Int8> {
return UnsafePointer((self as NSString).utf8String!)
}
}
func translate(toBraille: String, withTable: String) -> [String]? {
let filteredString = toBraille.onlyAlphabet
let table = withTable.utf8CString
var inputLength = CInt(filteredString.count)
var outputLength = CInt(maxBufferSize)
let inputValue = UnsafeMutablePointer<widechar>.allocate(capacity: Int(outputLength))
let outputValue = UnsafeMutablePointer<widechar>.allocate(capacity: Int(outputLength))
lou_translateString(table, inputValue, &inputLength, outputValue, &outputLength, nil, nil, 0)
//This is a function that I should use.
let result:[String] = []
return result
}

Answer 1

You have to create an array with the UTF-16 representation of the Swift
string that you can pass to the function, and on return create
a Swift string from the UTF-16 array result.
Lets assume for simplicity that the C function is imported to Swift as
func translateString(_ source: UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt16>, _ sourceLen: UnsafeMutablePointer<CInt>,
_ dest: UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt16>, _ destLen: UnsafeMutablePointer<CInt>)
Then the following should work (explanations inline):
// Create array with UTF-16 representation of source string:
let sourceString = "Hello world"
var sourceUTF16 = Array(sourceString.utf16)
var sourceLength = CInt(sourceUTF16.count)
// Allocate array for UTF-16 representation of destination string:
let maxBufferSize = 1000
var destUTF16 = Array<UInt16>(repeating: 0, count: maxBufferSize)
var destLength = CInt(destUTF16.count)
// Call translation function:
translateString(&sourceUTF16, &sourceLength, &destUTF16, &destLength)
// Create Swift string from UTF-16 representation in destination buffer:
let destString = String(utf16CodeUnits: destUTF16, count: Int(destLength))
I have assumed that the C function updates destLength to reflect
the actual length of the translated string on return.