Explorer Context Menu of a given file?

[Martin Carpella]

Hi!

Can anybody give me a pointer if/how I could retrieve the Explorer
context menu of a given file in C#?

Thanks in advance,
Martin

 

[Guest]

I assume by "retrieve" you want to customize the menu? This is considered a
Shell Extension...

Here's a link to a blog (which links to a blog) that describes why it's a
bad idea to write Shell Extensions in .NET:
http://blogs.msdn.com/junfeng/archive/2005/11/18/494572.aspx

 

[Martin Carpella]

Hello,

I assume by "retrieve" you want to customize the menu? This is considered a
Shell Extension...

Thank you for your response. I'm aware of shell extensions, and even of
the problems you refer to below (even if I disagree in some points, as
long as you prevent the extension from being injected into other
processes despite Explorer).

With retrieve I meant to display Explorer's context menu within my
Windows Forms application, where I display some files in a
ListView. What I'm trying to achieve is to get the context menu Explorer
would display for the given file and display this within the
application's context. I've read some examples how it can be done within
a ShellExtension written in C++, but I have no idea how/if it is
possible to do this outside a shell extension and from within managed
code.

Best regards,
Martin