CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#wpfrecycle-bin
Toby Smith
Toby Smith

Reputation: 1595

How can one access all the files/directories in the user's recycle bin in WPF?

NOTE: To be clear, I do not want to empty the recycle bin as answered in other questions.

Using answers from other questions on both Stack Overflow and Super User I have discovered the way to get the location of one's recycle bin in C# is:

@"C:\$Recycle.Bin\" + System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().User.ToString()

However, when I run the following code I am getting different files to what is actually in my recycle bin:

string location = @"C:\$Recycle.Bin\" + System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().User.ToString();
foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(location))
{
    Console.Writeline(file);
}

How can I correctly get all the files in my recycling bin? My needs are to access when the files were last used and to possibly then restore them.

Thanks.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1387

Answers (1)

Jeremy Thompson
Jeremy Thompson

Reputation: 65554

It's not as straight forward as initially thought because the Recycle Bin doesn't have a physical location, it's a virtual folder. To get a list of all files in the Recycle Bin and make this work you need to add a reference to shell32.dll (located in %SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll).

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Shell shell = new Shell();
    Folder folder = shell.NameSpace(0x000a);

    foreach (FolderItem2 item in folder.Items())
        Console.WriteLine("FileName:{0}", item.Name);

    Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(shell);
    Console.ReadLine();
}

REF: http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/161500-play-with-recycle-bin-in-code/

To get the LastModified Property of the files you can see my answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11660616/

Also note there's a Recycle Bin for each HDD so you will have to check all drives.

To restore files here is the solution in C#: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6025331/495455

Upvotes: 2

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