[VB6] Working with Libraries (Win7+)

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Windows 7 introduced the Library to the filesystem. But it's no ordinary folder. There are a few reasons you'd want to be able to work directly with these objects in VB... the issue first came up for me when I was writing a search program, and wanted to let the user select a library to search and then automatically search all folders in the library. Another time I came across the issue was for saving... if you pick a library from a save box, what folder should it go to? You need the library default save location. Further down the road, it's possible to actually write a program to manage libaries and even create new ones in VB. For that, I'll create a complete wrapper of IShellLibrary in a class module.

For now, however, I wanted to share a small sample program illustrating the basics of interacting with Library objects through the IShellLibrary interface. This program shows how to display basic Library information, and how to add a folder to an existing library.

As a bonus, it shows how to use a couple of important interfaces in VB- IShellItem and IEnumShellItems.

Note:
This project uses my updated version of olelib. The included olelib.tlb has minimal modifications and is identical to the original in every way except for IShellFolder, IShellFolder2, and IEnumIDList- which were implemented incorrectly and have been corrected (those and interfaces/dll calls in shell32.dll that take those as parameters are now in oleexp.tlb); and the TaskbarList coclass has been upgraded to ITaskbarList4 and subsequently now resides in oleexp. See olechanges.txt for more info.
You'll need to update the project reference to whereever you extract olelib.tlb and oleexp.tlb to.
Alternative: Create a new project, add the reference, then add Form1.frm and modLib.bas.
(although I've never heard of a .tlb capable of being used as a malware vector since it's not executable per-se, the paranoid among you will find the source code that can be put through MKTYPLIB to create a hash-identical olelib.tlb)

UPDATE: olelib/oleexp no longer included in ZIP, always get latest version from http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...ary-oleexp-tlb
Preview function - Getting all folders included in a library:

Code:

---

Public Function Library_GetFolders(pidlLib As Long, sout() As String) As Long
'WINDOWS 7 AND ABOVE ONLY:
'Given the fully qualified pidl for a library (including new ones besides music/videos/docs/pics)
'returns an array of the folders that are included in the library
Dim isi As IShellItem, isiChild As IShellItem, isiDef As IShellItem
Dim isl As IShellLibrary
Dim iesi As IEnumShellItems
Dim isia As IShellItemArray
Dim sinpt As Long, sinsz As String
Dim sinpt2 As Long, sinsz2 As String
Dim objClsid As GUIDA
Dim hRes As Long, hr As Long
Dim i As Long
ReDim sout(0)


hRes = SHCreateShellItem(0, 0, pidlLib, isi)
  'create a GUID from each CLSID string
  Call CLSIDFromString(StrPtr(CLSID_ShellLibrary), objClsid)
   
  'obtain an interface pointer for idClsid
  hr = CoCreateInstanceISL(objClsid, 0&, _
                      CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, _
                      IID_IShellLibrary, _
                      isl)

    Call isl.LoadLibraryFromItem(isi, STGM_READ)

        isl.GetFolders LFF_ALLITEMS, IID_IShellItemArray, isia
       
        isia.EnumItems iesi

        Do While (iesi.Next(1, isiChild, 0) = 0)
            ReDim Preserve sout(i)
            isiChild.GetDisplayName SIGDN_FILESYSPATH, sinpt
            sinsz = BStrFromLPWStr(sinpt, True)
            If sinsz <> "" Then
                sout(i) = sinsz
                i = i + 1
            End If
           
            Set isiChild = Nothing

        Loop
       
If sinpt Then Call CoTaskMemFree(sinpt)
Set isl = Nothing
Set isi = Nothing
Set isia = Nothing
Set iesi = Nothing

End Function

---

twinBASIC 64bit compatible version at https://github.com/fafalone/MiscDemos

Project updated:
-Shows use of .RemoveFolder
-Shows use of .SetContentType
-Uses newer olelib upgrade that is much more compatible with the old one

Just a heads up.

SIGDN_FILESYSPATH won't return anything if the folder is a virtual folder, i.e., Control Panel

If sinpt Then Call CoTaskMemFree(sinpt) line should be in the loop I believe. Each call to GetDisplayName that returns a pointer must have the memory freed on that pointer, per documentation. If your BStrFromLPWStr() function already addresses this, then ignore that last comment.

It's working using CoCreateInstance as it's declared in MSDN :)
Sorry for waking up a thread in sleep :)