Hi - in .NET Framework, I need to do something similar to the ShellExecute in the Win32 API. What I need to do is open a file with whatever program its file type is associated with in Windows.

I found the Shell command in .NET but it appears that you have to provide it with the EXE, which is not what I need to do.

I assume there has to be something more elegant in .NET Framework than using the Win32 API ShellExecute.

Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks.

All file associations are stored in the registry - I believe shellexecute is simply looking up these associations and sending the appropriate application a command-line.

If you don't want to do this I have also just sent the file to "explorer.exe" because explorer.exe will for the most part launch the appropriate association.

Good suggestion about using Explorer, thanks!

It turns out that using Explorer isn't working so well for users.

The filetype I'm opening in code is .jpg and on a user's machine it's associated with the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

However the following line of C# code always opens the .jpgs with Internet Explorer, and not the app that .jpg is associated with:

Interaction.Shell(theExe + " " + imagePath + filName, AppWinStyle.MaximizedFocus, false, -1);

The variable theExe is a string containing the path to the Windows Explorer executable on that computer. I've got a method that produces that, the core of which is:

string searchStr;
foreach (DriveInfo drvInf in DriveInfo.GetDrives())
{
//Have to use Fixed drive type to avoid situation in Citrix where
//we were getting the drives from the computer that logged in
//to Citrix (in addition to the Citrix machine's drives).
if (drvInf.DriveType == DriveType.Fixed)
{
searchStr = drvInf.Name;
searchStr = searchStr + @"Windows\explorer.exe";
FileInfo filInf = new FileInfo(searchStr);
if (filInf.Exists)
{
return searchStr;
}
}
}

--Any ideas on how I can get it to really use the associated file type?
Thanks.

I figured out a much better way to do this without using ShellExecute.

There's a class called Process under the System.Diagnostics namespace that's very useful. Kind of a strange place to put it since you'd think System.Diagnostics would be all about error handling.

Anyway, here's an example of how you can use StartInfo and then Start to open a file with whatever application it's type is associated with:

System.Diagnostics.Process myTestProcess = new System.Diagnostics.Process();

myTestProcess.StartInfo.FileName = @"c:\files\jpg\1.jpg";
myTestProcess.Start();