PROPVARIANT Helpers #4 - Vector Helpers

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One of the more prominent properties is PKEY_Keywords, e.g. "Tags". This is a vector property, and so it usually comes packaged in a PROPVARIANT with VT_VECTOR|VT_LPWSTR. If you deal with properties such as this, you may find the following helpers useful:

PSSTDAPI_(ULONG) PropVariantGetElementCount(REFPROPVARIANT propvar);
PSSTDAPI PropVariantGetStringElem(REFPROPVARIANT propvar, ULONG iElem, __deref_out PWSTR *ppszVal);

These functions work well together in a loop:

PROPVARIANT propvar = ...;
ULONG nElem = PropVariantGetElementCount(propvar);
for (ULONG i = 0; i < nElem; i++)
{
PWSTR pszVal;
if (SUCCEEDED(PropVariantGetStringElem(propvar, i, &pszVal)))
{
// ... do something with pszVal ...
CoTaskMemFree(pszVal);
}
}

The above code handles VT_EMPTY, VT_LPWSTR, VT_BSTR, VT_VECTOR|VT_LPWSTR, and VT_VECTOR|VT_BSTR typed values.

Of final note is that there are other PropVariantGetXXXElem functions for other supported types. Check propvarutil.h for the full list.