Knowing the application associated with a given file extension.
WHERE IS THAT INFORMATION?
The applications associated with the file extensions are stored in the Windows Registry. To get this information first we should retrieve the "class" that a file extensions belongs to. This information can be found at:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ext\(default)
where ".ext" is the file extension you want (like ".txt", ".bmp", etc.). Then we get the command line used to open that kind of files. To do that, we retrieve the data under
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\class\Shell\Open\Command\(default)
where "class" is the file class an extension belongs to. That string usually has the form
"D:\PATH\APPNAME.EXT" "%1" -OPTIONS
where %1 is a placeholder for the document file to open with the application, so we should find its position within the string and replace it with the filename we want to open.
EXAMPLE
The following function returns the command line of the associated application to open a documente file:
uses Registry, Windows, SysUtils;
function GetAssociation(const DocFileName: string): string;
var
FileClass: string;
Reg: TRegistry;
begin
Result := '';
Reg := TRegistry.Create(KEY_EXECUTE);
Reg.RootKey := HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT;
FileClass := '';
if Reg.OpenKeyReadOnly(ExtractFileExt(DocFileName)) then
begin
FileClass := Reg.ReadString('');
Reg.CloseKey;
end;
if FileClass <> '' then begin
if Reg.OpenKeyReadOnly(FileClass + '\Shell\Open\Command') then
begin
Result := Reg.ReadString('');
Reg.CloseKey;
end;
end;
Reg.Free;
end;