Programmatically determine which iFilters are installed

Question

I have a problem whereby the Adobe PDF iFilter doesn\'t work consistently for us. As such, we like to use the one from Foxit. The problem is, if we install the Foxit iFilter a

Answer 1

I'm using this small function to give out a list. It just uses the extension NOT the document type! In the most cases this is ok and could be easily changed here.

/// 

/// Implements a Function to get all available IFilters currently registered in this system
/// 
    
public string GetFilterList()
{
    //Our resulting string. We give back a ';' seperated list of extensions.
    string result = @"";
    string persistentHandlerClass;

    RegistryKey rk = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"Software\Classes");
    if (rk == null)
        return null;

    using (rk)
    {
        foreach(string subKeyName in rk.GetSubKeyNames())
        {
            if (subKeyName[0] == '.') //possible Extension
            {
                RegistryKey sk = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"Software\Classes\" + subKeyName + @"\PersistentHandler");
                if (sk == null)
                    continue;

                using (sk)
                {
                    persistentHandlerClass = (string)sk.GetValue(null);
                }

                if (persistentHandlerClass != null)
                {
                    string filterPersistClass = ReadStrFromHKLM(@"Software\Classes\CLSID\" + persistentHandlerClass +
                        @"\PersistentAddinsRegistered\{89BCB740-6119-101A-BCB7-00DD010655AF}");
                    string dllName = ReadStrFromHKLM(@"Software\Classes\CLSID\" + filterPersistClass + @"\InprocServer32");

                    // skip query.dll results, cause it's not an IFilter itself
                    if (dllName != null && filterPersistClass != null && (dllName.IndexOf("query.dll") < 0))
                    {
                        //result = result + subKeyName + @"[" + dllName + @"] - persistentHandlerClassAddin: " + persistentHandlerClass + "\r\n";  //[C:\Windows\system32\query.dll]
                        //result = result + subKeyName + @"[" + dllName + @"];";  //[C:\Windows\system32\query.dll]
                        result = result + subKeyName.ToLower() + @";";
                    }
                }

            }
        }

        return result;
    }

}