'Is there a way in C# to find the current location of a shortcut target programatically?

Windows shortcuts use the Distributed Link Tracking service to get the current location of shortcut target which has moved or renamed when the link is clicked on. Is there any way of obtaining this location programmatically (in C#)?

c++sharpwindowsshortcut


Solution 1:[1]

Yes. You can use code from this blog article by Jani Järvinen:

class Program
{

    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        const string shortcut = @"C:\test.lnk"; // Shortcut file name here

        string pathOnly = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(shortcut);
        string filenameOnly = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(shortcut);

        Shell32.Shell shell = new Shell32.Shell();
        Folder folder = shell.NameSpace(pathOnly);
        FolderItem folderItem = folder.ParseName(filenameOnly);
        if (folderItem != null)
        {
            Shell32.ShellLinkObject link = (Shell32.ShellLinkObject)folderItem.GetLink;
            Console.WriteLine(link.Path);
        }

        Console.ReadKey();

    }
}

Solution 2:[2]

A small addition to the code put up by Devil_coder /Cody Gray does what I need. Adding link.Resolve as shown below, with flags as defined in https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb773996(v=vs.85).aspx makes link.Path return the current link target.

Shell32.ShellLinkObject link = (Shell32.ShellLinkObject)folderItem.GetLink; link.Resolve(5); Console.WriteLine(link.Path);

Solution 3:[3]

It's easy, just use this lambda expression for getting target path or many other informations of shortcut.

public static string GetShortcutTargetFile(string shortcutFilename) => System.IO.File.Exists(shortcutFilename) ? ((IWshShortcut)new WshShell().CreateShortcut(shortcutFilename)).TargetPath : string.Empty;

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Cody Gray
Solution 2 SimonKravis
Solution 3 Har

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