[SOLVED] Winapi: programatically obtain path of special folder given its CLSID as string

Winapi: programatically obtain path of special folder given its CLSID as string

Does Windows API offer any way to obtain a special folder path (i.e. My Documents), given its CLSID as string (i.e. ::{450d8fba-ad25-11d0-98a8-0800361b1103})? Can this be done in any way? Also, it should be done with functions supported under Windows XP.

Thank you in advance.

Solution

The fundamental API you need for this is SHParseDisplayName. That will take the ::{GUID} format path and convert it to a PIDL.

If the PIDL then has a string form (as your example does, since it resolves to the Documents folder), you can use SHGetPathFromIDList to convert it.

LPITEMIDLIST pidl;
if (SUCCEEDED(SHParseDisplayName(L"::{450d8fba-ad25-11d0-98a8-0800361b1103}", nullptr, &pidl, 0, nullptr)))
{
    wchar_t wchPath[MAX_PATH];
    if (SUCCEEDED(SHGetPathFromIDList(pidl, wchPath)))
    {
        // string form of path is now in wchPath
    }
    ILFree(pidl);
}