Article #22091: How to get a file's associated icon.

Question

How can I programatically get a file's associated default icon without looking it up in the registry and loading it explicitly?

Answer

This is a lot easier than most people think. There is a relatively little-known function called ExtractAssociatedIcon. The prototype is as follows: HICON ExtractAssociatedIcon(     HINSTANCE hInst, // application instance handle     LPTSTR lpIconPath, // path and filename of file for which icon is wanted     LPWORD lpiIcon // pointer to icon index ); Example: //--------------------------------------------------------------------------- void __fastcall TForm1::Button1Click(TObject *Sender) { HICON ico; WORD idx; ico = ExtractAssociatedIcon(HInstance,"c:WINNT\\system32\\ntimage.gif",&idx); Image1->Picture->Icon->Handle = ico; } //---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last Modified: 27-OCT-00