{"id":6553,"date":"2012-09-20T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2012\/09\/20\/how-do-i-invoke-a-verb-on-an-ishellitemarray\/"},"modified":"2012-09-20T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T07:00:00","slug":"how-do-i-invoke-a-verb-on-an-ishellitemarray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20120920-00\/?p=6553","title":{"rendered":"How do I invoke a verb on an IShellItemArray?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nA customer wanted to invoke a command on multiple items at once.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nI have an IShellItemArray<\/code>,\nand I want to invoke a verb with that array as the parameter.\nI know that I can invoke a verb on a single IShellItem<\/code>\nby the code below, but how do I pass an entire array?\n<\/p>\n

\nvoid InvokeVerbOnItem(__in IShellItem *psi,\n                      __in_opt PCWSTR pszVerb)\n{\n PIDLIST_ABSOLUTE pidl;\n HRESULT hr = SHGetIDListFromObject(psi, &pidl);\n if (SUCCEEDED(hr)) {\n  SHELLEXECUTEINFO sei = { sizeof(sei) };\n  sei.fMask = SEE_MASK_UNICODE |\n              SEE_MASK_INVOKEIDLIST |\n              SEE_MASK_IDLIST;\n  sei.lpIDList = pidl;\n  sei.lpVerb = pszVerb;\n  sei.nShow = SW_SHOWNORMAL;\n  ShellExecuteEx(&sei);\n  CoTaskMemFree(pidl);\n }\n}\n<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nThe function Invoke­Verb­On­Item<\/code>\ninvokes the command by extracting the pidl,\nthen asking Shell­Execute­Ex<\/code> to invoke\nthe command on the pidl.\nA limitation of Shell­Execute*<\/code> is that\nit can invoke on only one pidl.\nWhat if you want to invoke it on a bunch of pidls at once?\n(Doing it all at once gives the target program the opportunity\nto optimize the multi-target invoke.)\n<\/p>\n
\n\nAs noted in the documentation<\/a>,\npassing\nSEE_MASK_INVOKE­ID­LIST<\/code> flag\ntells the\nShell­Execute­Ex<\/code>\nto\n“use the IContextMenu<\/b> interface of the selected item’s\nshortcut menu handler.”\n<\/p>\n
\nSo if you are frustrated by the limitations of the middle man,\nthen cut out the middle man!\n<\/p>\n
\nvoid InvokeVerbOnItemArray(__in IShellItemArray *psia,\n                           __in_opt PCWSTR pszVerb)\n{\n IContextMenu *pcm;\n HRESULT hr = psia->BindToHandler(BHID_SFUIObject,\n                                  IID_PPV_ARGS(&pcm));\n if (SUCCEEDED(hr)) {\n  ... context menu invoke incorporated by reference<\/a> ...\n  pcm->Release();\n }\n}\n<\/pre>\n
\nIf you think about it, the original\nInvoke­Verb­On­Item<\/code>\nfunction could’ve avoid the middle man too.\nIt converted an IShellItem<\/code>\n(a live object which encapsulates an\nIShell­Folder<\/code> and a child pidl)\ninto an absolute pidl (a dead object),\nwhich then passed it to\nShell­Execute­Ex<\/code>,\nwhich had to reanimate the object back into an\nIShell­Folder<\/code> and child pidl\nso it could call\nGet­UI­Object­Of<\/code>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A customer wanted to invoke a command on multiple items at once. I have an IShellItemArray, and I want to invoke a verb with that array as the parameter. I know that I can invoke a verb on a single IShellItem by the code below, but how do I pass an entire array? void InvokeVerbOnItem(__in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-6553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-code"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
A customer wanted to invoke a command on multiple items at once. I have an IShellItemArray, and I want to invoke a verb with that array as the parameter. I know that I can invoke a verb on a single IShellItem by the code below, but how do I pass an entire array? void InvokeVerbOnItem(__in […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}