Read/Write 'Extended' file properties (C#)

Question

I\'m trying to find out how to read/write to the extended file properties in C# e.g. Comment, Bit Rate, Date Accessed, Category etc that you can see in Windows explorer. An

Answer 1

Here is a solution for reading - not writing - the extended properties based on what I found on this page and at help with shell32 objects.

To be clear this is a hack. It looks like this code will still run on Windows 10 but will hit on some empty properties. Previous version of Windows should use:

        var i = 0;
        while (true)
        {
            ...
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(header)) break;
            ...
            i++;

On Windows 10 we assume that there are about 320 properties to read and simply skip the empty entries:

    private Dictionary GetExtendedProperties(string filePath)
    {
        var directory = Path.GetDirectoryName(filePath);
        var shell = new Shell32.Shell();
        var shellFolder = shell.NameSpace(directory);
        var fileName = Path.GetFileName(filePath);
        var folderitem = shellFolder.ParseName(fileName);
        var dictionary = new Dictionary();
        var i = -1;
        while (++i < 320)
        {
            var header = shellFolder.GetDetailsOf(null, i);
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(header)) continue;
            var value = shellFolder.GetDetailsOf(folderitem, i);
            if (!dictionary.ContainsKey(header)) dictionary.Add(header, value);
            Console.WriteLine(header +": " + value);
        }
        Marshal.ReleaseComObject(shell);
        Marshal.ReleaseComObject(shellFolder);
        return dictionary;
    }

As mentioned you need to reference the Com assembly Interop.Shell32.

If you get an STA related exception, you will find the solution here:

Exception when using Shell32 to get File extended properties

I have no idea what those properties names would be like on a foreign system and couldn't find information about which localizable constants to use in order to access the dictionary. I also found that not all the properties from the Properties dialog were present in the dictionary returned.

BTW this is terribly slow and - at least on Windows 10 - parsing dates in the string retrieved would be a challenge so using this seems to be a bad idea to start with.

On Windows 10 you should definitely use the Windows.Storage library which contains the SystemPhotoProperties, SystemMusicProperties etc. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/files/quickstart-getting-file-properties

And finally, I posted a much better solution that uses WindowsAPICodePack there