Get the Description of File Types from Registry programmatically

Get the Description of File Types from Registry programmatically

 

The following Code Snippet will help you to get the information about a particular file extension directly from the registry. It can be used to provide the user about the nature of the file type..

Here is the code snippet for that:

/// <summary>

/// Goes through registry to get the file type description for each extension

/// </summary>

/// <param name="theExtension"></param>

/// <returns></returns>

private string GetFileTypeString(String theExtension)
{
    // HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT //

    RegistryKey root = Registry.ClassesRoot;
    // something like '.csproj'

    RegistryKey openValue = root.OpenSubKey(theExtension);
    try
    {
        if (openValue != null)
        {
            // This will get the name of a key - something like 'VisualStudio.csproj.8.0'

            String val = openValue.GetValue("").ToString();
            // So we go there to get the value //

            RegistryKey typeVal = root.OpenSubKey(val);
            // something like 'Visual C# Project file'

            return typeVal.GetValue("").ToString();

        }
        else
        {
            // Sometimes its unrecognized //

            return theExtension;
        }
    }
    //Sometimes the default key value is Null...no big deal

    catch (Exception)
    {
        return theExtension;
    }

}