HOWTO: Retrieve an Icon for a File Class Without a File

ID: Q179167

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface (API)

SUMMARY

This article explains how to use the SHGetFileInfo API to retrieve the icon for a file class without having a specific file of that class available.

MORE INFORMATION

To do this, select the SHGFI_USEFILEATTRIBUTES flag and FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL so that the API assumes that the file exists and it will not try to look for it on disk.

For example, to find the icon associated with ".zip" files the call would look like:

   SHFILEINFO sfi;
   HIMAGELIST hil;

   ZeroMemory(&sfi,sizeof(sfi));
   hil = SHGetFileInfo(".zip",
                       FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL,
                       &sfi,
                       sizeof(sfi),
                       SHGFI_USEFILEATTRIBUTES|SHGFI_ICON);

   // hil now contains the handle to the system image list
   // containing the large icon images.
   // sfi.hIcon contains the large icon for the file.

REFERENCES

For additional information about the SHGetFileInfo API, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q131500
   TITLE     : HOWTO: Obtain Icon Information from an .EXE in Windows 95

Additional query words:

Keywords          : kbLib kbNTOS400 kbWinOS2000 kbWinOS95 kbWinOS98 kbGrpShell 
Issue type        : kbhowto

Last Reviewed: December 17, 1998