Passing list of numpy arrays to C using cython

I have a list list_of_arrays of 3D numpy arrays that I want to pass to a C function with the template

int my_func_c(double **data, int **shape, int n_arrays)

such that

data[i]  : pointer to the numpy array values in list_of_arrays[i]
shape[i] : pointer to the shape of the array in list_of_arrays[i] e.g. [2,3,4]

How can I call my_func_c using a cython interface function?

My first idea was to do something like below (which works) but I feel there is a better way just using numpy arrays without mallocing and freeing.

# my_func_c.pyx

import numpy as np
cimport numpy as np
cimport cython
from libc.stdlib cimport malloc, free

cdef extern from "my_func.c":
    double my_func_c(double **data, int **shape, int n_arrays)

def my_func(list list_of_arrays):
    cdef int n_arrays  = len(list_of_arrays)
    cdef double **data = <double **> malloc(n_arrays*sizeof(double *))
    cdef int **shape   = <int **> malloc(n_arrays*sizeof(int *))
    cdef double x;

    cdef np.ndarray[double, ndim=3, mode="c"] temp

    for i in range(n_arrays):
        temp = list_of_arrays[i]
        data[i]  = &temp[0,0,0]
        shape[i] = <int *> malloc(3*sizeof(int))
        for j in range(3):
            shape[i][j] = list_of_arrays[i].shape[j]

    x = my_func_c(data, shape, n_arrays)

    # Free memory
    for i in range(n_arrays):
        free(shape[i])
    free(data)
    free(shape)

    return x

N.B.

To see a working example we can use a very simple function calculating the product of all the arrays in our list.

# my_func.c

double my_func_c(double **data, int **shape, int n_arrays) {
    int array_idx, i0, i1, i2;

    double prod = 1.0;

    // Loop over all arrays
    for (array_idx=0; array_idx<n_arrays; array_idx++) {
        for (i0=0; i0<shape[array_idx][0]; i0++) {
            for (i1=0; i1<shape[array_idx][1]; i1++) {
                for (i2=0; i2<shape[array_idx][2]; i2++) {
                    prod = prod*data[array_idx][i0*shape[array_idx][1]*shape[array_idx][2] + i1*shape[array_idx][2] + i2];
                }
            }
        }
    }

    return prod;
}

Create the setup.py file,

# setup.py

from distutils.core import setup
from Cython.Build import cythonize
import numpy as np

setup(
    name='my_func',
    ext_modules = cythonize("my_func_c.pyx"),
    include_dirs=[np.get_include()]
    )

Compile

python3 setup.py build_ext --inplace

Finally we can run a simple test

# test.py

import numpy as np
from my_func_c import my_func

a = [1+np.random.rand(3,1,2), 1+np.random.rand(4,5,2), 1+np.random.rand(1,2,3)]

print('Numpy product: {}'.format(np.prod([i.prod() for i in a])))
print('my_func product: {}'.format(my_func(a)))

using

python3 test.py