Programatically invoking the default application for a filetype

Question

On a related note to this question, say I've got an file with an handler defined, how would I programatically invoke the registered handler? Don't necessarily need the actual code to do this, just a pointer to some docs or the terminology to google for this.

Thanks,

Chris

Answer 1

There's the ShellExecute function and its advanced cousin, ShellExecuteEx.

Answer 2

It is sufficent to start a new process specifying the file you want to open with the default application - the rest is handled by Windows. In C# this is done as follows.

Process.Start("Foo.jpg");

This will open the image using the default application for JPEG images.