Getting at system Icon resources

Im writing a quick program that displays files as icons and I am wondering where these icons are stored? For example, the icon for .BMP is not external so it must be stored somewhere either in a system directory or as a resource in a DLL somewhere.

How does one get at these icons?

SHGetFileInfo

The icons/images are stored in what is called a System Image List.
Depending on what you need it for, I'd say you're going to be in store for a lot of frustration. There is no constant ordering system for system images, so #5 in the list on system X might give you the BMP icon, whereas #5 on system Y might give you something else. I've yet to find a standard way of getting/using Windows standard images.

Thats not a problem for me because I will build a map of my own descriptors to those indexes. For some reason when I use SHGetFileInfo, what I get back is an index but no location. For example, what if an exe or shortcut has its own ICO file embedded inside the EXE. I would want to get at that icon so that I could draw it in my program.

here is the first way I tried to get at the Index and Path:

Code:

---

        SHFILEINFO *FileInfo = new SHFILEINFO();

        // Get a list of files specified by Path
        SHGetFileInfo(FileName,
                                  0,
                                  FileInfo,
                                  sizeof(SHFILEINFO),
                                  SHGFI_ICONLOCATION);

---

According the MSDN docs, this way should have returned an index in FileInfo->iIcon (Which it does, correctly) and also the path to the file that contains this resource inside FileIno->szDisplayName. The display name always ends up being a NULL string.

So instead I tried another approach that somewhat works but its still broken:

Code:

---

        LPITEMIDLIST  Pidl;
        LPSHELLFOLDER DesktopFolder;
        LPSHELLFOLDER Folder;
        OLECHAR      OlePath[MAX_PATH];
        ULONG        Attributes;
        HRESULT      hr;
        IExtractIcon* Extract;
        TCHAR                  Path[MAX_PATH];
        LPENUMIDLIST  EnumIDL;
        unsigned Flags;
        int Index;

        if (SUCCEEDED(SHGetDesktopFolder(&DesktopFolder)))
        {
                // Convert to Unicode
                MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, MB_PRECOMPOSED, FileName, -1, OlePath, MAX_PATH);

                // Convert the path to an ITEMIDLIST.
                hr = DesktopFolder->ParseDisplayName(NULL, NULL, OlePath, NULL, (LPITEMIDLIST *) &Pidl, &Attributes);

                if (SUCCEEDED(hr))
                {
                        // Populate the Icon Extract Interface
                        hr = DesktopFolder->GetUIObjectOf(NULL, 1, (LPCITEMIDLIST *) &Pidl, IID_IExtractIcon, 0, (void **) &Extract);

                        if (SUCCEEDED(hr))
                        {
                                // retrieve the Icon Path and Index
                                if (SUCCEEDED(Extract->GetIconLocation(GIL_OPENICON, Path, _MAX_PATH, &Index, &Flags)))
                                {
                                        if (!(Flags & GIL_NOTFILENAME))
                                        {
                                                if (Index == -1)
                                                {
                                                        // Special case for Control Panel Apps
                                                        Index = 0;
                                                }
                                        }
                                }                               

                                Extract->Release();
                        }
                }


                //release the desktop folder object
                DesktopFolder->Release();
        }       

        return NULL;

---

The Index seems to be right but the Path variable ends up pointing to C:\Windows\Explorer.exe. This is obviously false.

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated!!

Depending on which icon you are trying to retrieve it may very well be true. I checked explorer.exe, it contains about 16 icons (browseicon, infoicon, mycomp, error, showdesktop, etc).

As discussed in this thread on SHGFI_ICONLOCATION, you can use SHGFI_ICON or SHGFI_SYSICONINDEX rather than SHGFI_ICONLOCATION.

Thanks all for the help, I am currently polling a directory and getting the corresponding icons, but it it possible to get the position of the icons in a given folder, such as the desktop??

Also, while im polling the folders, is it possible to only grab files that are not hidden or system folders/files?

>> Also, while im polling the folders, is it possible to only grab files that are not hidden or system folders/files? <<

Use GetFileAttributes.

>> Thanks all for the help, I am currently polling a directory and getting the corresponding icons, but it it possible to get the position of the icons in a given folder, such as the desktop?? <<

There is no documented method. However, the desktop is a list-view, so you can probably hack it.

Good stuff, I found a decent example by Jeroen-bart Engelen which is available here. Unfortunately its very limiting but atleast it gives a decent explanation of how to do it alternatively there is an example by J. Richter and it gives a bit more control over what goes on. The program is called DIPS and available here.

Thanks for the help so far. my program is coming along nicely, but I have just one more question. Is it possible to grab the system icons for virtual folders such as "my computer" or "network neighborhood", etc???

Quote:

---

Is it possible to grab the system icons for virtual folders such as "my computer" or "network neighborhood", etc???

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Like in runtime, so that if the user customises the icon for My Computer, that's the icon you'll get? Or do you just want to take the icon that's currently being used in My Computer and bundle that with your program?

Note that you might run into copyright issues. I'm not sure that Microsoft would like you using their My Computer icon.

Yes at runtime. Well the icons are already sitting in memory. Its just a matter of getting them. I just dont know how to get them because they do not have a physical file on disk associated with it.

You can probably still use SHGetFileInfo. Something like this:

Code:

---

LPITEMIDLIST pidl = NULL;

/* Get the pidl for My Computer. See function documentation for other CSIDLs. */
SHGetSpecialFolderLocation(NULL, CSIDL_DRIVES, &pidl);

/* Use pidl in call to SHGetFileInfo. Note use of SHGFI_PIDL flag. */
SHGetFileInfo((LPCTSTR) pidl, 0, &fileinfo, sizeof(fileinfo), SHGFI_ICON | SHGFI_PIDL);

/* Free pidl memory. */
CoTaskMemFree(pidl);

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