Selecting a default folder with SHBrowseForFolder

Today, there was an article posted on the Code Project website that showed how to use SHBrowseForFolder, and there was a question from a reader in the forum, asking how a default folder can be specified. This is pretty easy to do, and all you need to do is to set the BIF_VALIDATE flag, specify a callback, and in the callback, handle BFFM_INITIALIZED which indicates that the dialog is ready, and then SendMessage a BFFM_SETSELECTION message to the HWND of the dialog. Here’s some commented code that shows how this is done.

int CALLBACK BrowseCallbackProc(HWND hwnd,
    UINT uMsg,LPARAM lParam,LPARAM lpData)
{
    // Look for BFFM_INITIALIZED
    if(uMsg == BFFM_INITIALIZED)
    {
        SendMessage(hwnd, BFFM_SETSELECTION,
            TRUE,(LPARAM)_T("C:\\Program Files"));
    }
    return 0;
}

void ShowSHBrowseForFolderDemoDlg()
{
    BROWSEINFO bi = {0};
    // Make sure BIF_VALIDATE is specified
    bi.ulFlags = BIF_USENEWUI|BIF_VALIDATE;
    bi.lpszTitle = _T("Choose a folder");
    // Set the callback function
    bi.lpfn = BrowseCallbackProc;
    LPITEMIDLIST pIDL = SHBrowseForFolder(&bi);
    if(pIDL)
    {
        // Your code goes here...
        CoTaskMemFree(pIDL);
    }
}