Getting the icon association for any file or folder with the Python Windows API [#]
I wanted to make a file browser which has the correct file icons for each file type, instead of just getting them from the file name. This is a bad solution, since it has to call images from disc and may be wrong if the name is different. This method uses the Windows API to get the exact icon. Tested in Python 3.6 in Windows 10.
from win32com.shell import shell, shellcon
from PIL import Image, ImageTk
import win32api
import win32con
import win32ui
import win32gui
def get_icon(PATH, size):
SHGFI_ICON = 0x000000100
SHGFI_ICONLOCATION = 0x000001000
if size == "small":
SHIL_SIZE= 0x00001
elif size == "large":
SHIL_SIZE= 0x00002
else:
raise TypeError("Invalid argument for 'size'. Must be equal to 'small' or 'large'")
ret, info = shell.SHGetFileInfo(PATH, 0, SHGFI_ICONLOCATION | SHGFI_ICON | SHIL_SIZE)
hIcon, iIcon, dwAttr, name, typeName = info
ico_x = win32api.GetSystemMetrics(win32con.SM_CXICON)
hdc = win32ui.CreateDCFromHandle(win32gui.GetDC(0))
hbmp = win32ui.CreateBitmap()
hbmp.CreateCompatibleBitmap(hdc, ico_x, ico_x)
hdc = hdc.CreateCompatibleDC()
hdc.SelectObject(hbmp)
hdc.DrawIcon((0, 0), hIcon)
win32gui.DestroyIcon(hIcon)
bmpinfo = hbmp.GetInfo()
bmpstr = hbmp.GetBitmapBits(True)
img = Image.frombuffer(
"RGBA",
(bmpinfo["bmWidth"], bmpinfo["bmHeight"]),
bmpstr, "raw", "BGRA", 0, 1
)
if size == "small":
img = img.resize((16, 16), Image.ANTIALIAS)
return img
This function was inspired by this stack overflow post, but as you can see it has a number of advantages:
- Can get different sizes for the icons (which sometimes look different)
- Returns with a transparent background
- Doesn't write temporary files to disk, works entirely in memory and returns a PIL image
Lets test some file paths:
