Question

From an ASP.Net C# application I need to access the ‘Title’ property value from multiple (100+) files residing on the local file system.

e.g. Right click a file on your file system and select ‘Properties’. In the ‘Summary’ tab there is a ‘Title’ property along with ‘Subject’, ‘Category’ etc. properties. I am after the value residing in the ‘Title’ property.

Whilst developing the web application and testing using Cassini, I was able to extract the ‘Title’ property value using Shell32.dll

Folder folder = _shell.NameSpace(Path.GetDirectoryName(path));
FolderItem item = folder.ParseName(Path.GetFileName(path));
folder.GetDetailsOf(item, (int)eDetailColumns.Title);

The above code doesn’t work when running within IIS. The ‘folder’ object doesn’t contain any items.

I have read that the ASP.Net worker process does not have a running instance of explorer – thus no Shell causing my Shell32 code not to function correctly.

Is there another way I can extract the ‘Title’ property value from within an ASP.Net application?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I just tested the following code running in IIS7 and I’m able to access the Title of a word document I created and various other properties belonging to it:

Shell shell = new Shell();
string path = Server.MapPath("~/Word.doc");

Folder folder = shell.NameSpace(Path.GetDirectoryName(path));
FolderItem folderItem = folder.ParseName(Path.GetFileName(path));

for(int i = 0; i < 32; i++)
{
  Response.Write(i + " : " +folder.GetDetailsOf(folderItem, i) + "<br/>");
}