Question

Is it possible to call a windows common dialog and retrieve its output from within a command line application? I’d like to build most of my application to run from the console, since in my particular case it would SERIOUSLY reduce complexity; however, I would like to be able to pop up a folder selector dialog to let the user pick out a directory. I’d just like to avoid the overhead of creating a full-blown GUI app.

I’d be doing this in C++, if that makes a difference.

Answer 1

#include <windows.h>
#include <shlobj.h>
#include <iostream>

int main() {
    BROWSEINFO bi = {0};
    bi.lpszTitle = "Pick a Directory";
    LPITEMIDLIST pidl = SHBrowseForFolder (&bi);
    if (pidl != 0) {
        TCHAR path[MAX_PATH];
        if (SHGetPathFromIDList(pidl, path)) {
            std::cout << path << "\n";
        }

        IMalloc* imalloc = 0;
        if (SUCCEEDED(SHGetMalloc(&imalloc))) {
            imalloc->Free(pidl);
            imalloc->Release();
        }
    }
}

(taken from http://vcfaq.mvps.org/sdk/20.htm)