HOWTO: Obtain Icon Information from an .EXE in Windows 95

• Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface (API) included with: - Microsoft Windows 95 version 4.0

SUMMARY

SHGetFileInfo is a new API that Windows 95 provides to allow an application to extract icon information from a particular file. With the introduction of large (32x32) and small (16x16) icons in Windows 95, SHGetFileInfo provides this information as well by filling in the appropriate members of the SHFILEINFO structure.

MORE INFORMATION

In Windows version 3.1, an application can use the ExtractIcon() to retrieve the handle of an icon associated with a specified executable file, dynamic link library, or icon file.

Windows 95 provides a new function, SHGetFileInfo(), which, among other things, provides this icon information when using the SHGFI_ICON flag. When the function returns, the handle to the icon is returned in the hIcon member of the SHFILEINFO structure, and the index of the icon within the system image list is returned in the iIcon member of the same structure.

The code below demonstrates how to retrieve the Gen32 sample's icon and associates that icon with a dialog box's button:

   HICON  hGen32Icon;
   SHFILEINFO  shfi;

   if (SHGetFileInfo ((LPCSTR)"C:\\MySamplesDir\\Gen32\\Gen32.Exe",
                        0,
                        &shfi,
                        sizeof (SHFILEINFO),
                        SHGFI_ICON))
   {
      hGen32Icon = shfi.hIcon;

      // Note that this button has been defined in the .RC file
      // to be of BS_ICON style
      SendDlgItemMessage (hDlg,
                          IDC_BUTTON,
                          BM_SETIMAGE,
                          (WPARAM)IMAGE_ICON,
                          (LPARAM)(HICON)hGen32Icon);
   }
   else
   {
   // SHGetFileInfo failed...
   }

SHGetFileInfo() provides the file's large and small icon information as well, using the SHGFI_LARGEICON and SHGFI_SMALLICON flags respectively. SHGFI_LARGEICON returns the handle of the system image list containing the large icon images, whereas SHGFI_SMALLICON returns that of the system image list containing the small icon images. These flags, when OR'ed with the SHGFI_SYSICONINDEX flag, return the icon index within the appropriate system image list in the iIcon member of the SHFILEINFO struct.

The code sample below demonstrates how to retrieve the small icon associated with the same GEN32 sample.

   HICON  hGen32Icon;
   HIMAGELIST hSysImageList;
   SHFILEINFO  shfi;

   hSysImageList = SHGetFileInfo

                                   0,
                                   &shfi,
                                   sizeof (SHFILEINFO),
                                   SHGFI_SYSICONINDEX | SHGFI_SMALLICON);
   if (hSysImageList)
   {
   hGen32Icon = ImageList_GetIcon (hSysImageList,
                                        shfi.iIcon,
                                        ILD_NORMAL);
   }
   else
   {
   // SHGetFileInfo failed...
   }

NOTE: The SHGetFileInfo() API will be supported in the next release of Windows NT that supports the new shell interface very similar to Windows 95. This API is not supported in Windows NT version 3.51.