windowswinapiwindows-shellcommon-dialog

Shell Link common dialog?

Before you call CreateFile, you need the name of a file. You can of course create your own dialog:

But fortunately Windows already did all the UI heavy lifting, and provided you an IFileOpenDialog common dialog:

enter image description here

Does the same exist for creating a link?

Windows Explorer has a dialog that guides the user through creating a shortcut to a file, folder, item, url, etc:

enter image description here

Is this dialog a "common" dialog - available for use by applications?

Edit: Also a reminder: I'm not looking to invoke the wizard - because the wizard creates the link on the hard drive. And i don't want it saved on the hard drive. I need the ability to get the resulting:

or the

that the user entered.

I need a "location picker" user interface.

Solution

  • Does the same exist for creating a link?

    Windows Explorer has a dialog that guides the user through creating a shortcut to a file, folder, item, url, etc:

    Yes, it is the API NewLinkHereW

    A test (VS 2015, Windows 10) =>

    (link created in e:\test for the sample)

            typedef void(WINAPI *NLH)(HWND hwnd, HINSTANCE hAppInstance, LPTSTR lpszCmdLine, int nCmdShow);
        NLH NewLinkHereW;
        HMODULE hDll = LoadLibrary(L"appwiz.cpl");
        NewLinkHereW = (NLH)GetProcAddress(hDll, "NewLinkHereW");
        WCHAR wsFolder[MAX_PATH] = L"e:\\test";
        lstrcat(wsFolder, L"\\newlink.lnk");
        if (NewLinkHereW)
        {
            HANDLE hLink = CreateFile(wsFolder, GENERIC_WRITE, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, CREATE_ALWAYS, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL);
            if (hLink != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
            {
                CloseHandle(hLink);
                NewLinkHereW(GetDesktopWindow(), NULL, wsFolder, SW_SHOWNORMAL);
            }               
        }