We often create shortcuts for
program/documents on Windows desktop. This is a two step process. In
step 1 we right click on the desktop and select ‘Create
Shortcut’ from the menu that pops up. In step 2 we select the
file for which the short is to be created. At times we may want to
do this procedure programmatically. Here is the program which, shows
how this can be achieved.
When we execute the program a
dialog box shown in Figure 1 pops up.
Figure 1.
First we need to select the
file for which shortcut needs to be created. This can be done by
clicking the ‘browse’ button in the dialog. When we do
so the function OnButton1( ) gets
called. This function pops up a file dialog and permits the user to
select a file. The selected file name and complete path is then
retrieved using the functions CFileDialog::GetFileTitle( ) and
CFileDialog::Get-PathName( ). The selected file name is
then displayed in the edit box of dialog shown in Figure 1.
Now to create a shortcut for
this file you need to click the ‘Create Shortcut’ button
from the dialog. This leads to a call to OnButton2( ). In this function we have retrieved the data
of the name ‘Desktop’ from the registry key
HKEY_CURRENT_US-ER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current
Version\Explorer\Shell Folders’. This has been achieved
through calls to API functions RegOpenKeyEx(
) and
RegQueryValueEx( ). Next we
have built three CString objects namely filename, linkname and descname. If the
browsed file has a name ‘c:\about.cpp’ then these CString objects would hold
‘c:\about.cpp’,
‘c:\Windows\desktop\about.lnk’, and ‘shortcut to
about’.
Lastly to automatically create
the shortcut, the function createshortcut(
) is called. In this function we have created a COM object with
CLSID CLSID_ShellLink and an interface
ID called IID_ IShellLink. Then using QueryInterface( ) we have enquired whether
this component has implemented an IPersistFile interface. If it has then we call the
functions
SetPath( ) and SetDescription( ) of IShellLink interface and
Save(
) of IPersistFile interface. Of
these, the SetPath( ) function sets the
path and filename of a shell link object, whereas the SetDescription( ) function.sets the
description string for a shell link object. The Save( ) function saves the object into the specified file.
Lastly the Release( ) function has been
called to decrement the reference count of the specified
interface.