How to get path of Start Menu's Programs directory?

Question

...for current user? for all users?

I'm working an a small program which needs to create links in the start menu. Currently I'm hardcoding like below, but it only works in english locales, for example it should be "Startmenü" in german. What are cleaner, more portable approaches?

OUR_STARTMENU = os.environ['ALLUSERSPROFILE'] + '\Start Menu\Programs\Our Stuff'

thank you

Bristling

Answer 1

A friend, Luke Pinner of Environment.gov.au, gave a solution by email which uses a core module (python 2.5+). Believed to be multi-lingual as the return from the API call is unicode. Tested on Win7 with Japanese locale, and on another us-english machine by manually changing Start Menu to point to %USERPROFILE%\Startmenü

''' Get windows special folders without pythonwin
    Example:
            import specialfolders
            start_programs = specialfolders.get(specialfolders.PROGRAMS)

Code is public domain, do with it what you will. 

Luke Pinner - Environment.gov.au, 2010 February 10
'''

#Imports use _syntax to mask them from autocomplete IDE's
import ctypes as _ctypes
from ctypes.wintypes import HWND as _HWND, HANDLE as _HANDLE,DWORD as _DWORD,LPCWSTR as _LPCWSTR,MAX_PATH as _MAX_PATH, create_unicode_buffer as _cub
_SHGetFolderPath = _ctypes.windll.shell32.SHGetFolderPathW

#public special folder constants
DESKTOP=                             0
PROGRAMS=                            2
MYDOCUMENTS=                         5
FAVORITES=                           6
STARTUP=                             7
RECENT=                              8
SENDTO=                              9
STARTMENU=                          11
MYMUSIC=                            13
MYVIDEOS=                           14
NETHOOD=                            19
FONTS=                              20
TEMPLATES=                          21
ALLUSERSSTARTMENU=                  22
ALLUSERSPROGRAMS=                   23
ALLUSERSSTARTUP=                    24
ALLUSERSDESKTOP=                    25
APPLICATIONDATA=                    26
PRINTHOOD=                          27
LOCALSETTINGSAPPLICATIONDATA=       28
ALLUSERSFAVORITES=                  31
LOCALSETTINGSTEMPORARYINTERNETFILES=32
COOKIES=                            33
LOCALSETTINGSHISTORY=               34
ALLUSERSAPPLICATIONDATA=            35

def get(intFolder):
    _SHGetFolderPath.argtypes = [_HWND, _ctypes.c_int, _HANDLE, _DWORD, _LPCWSTR]
    auPathBuffer = _cub(_MAX_PATH)
    exit_code=_SHGetFolderPath(0, intFolder, 0, 0, auPathBuffer)
    return auPathBuffer.value

Bristling

FYI: best reference I could find for MS SHGetFolderPath is here, which notes that it deprecated as of Vista in favour of SHGetKnownFolderPath – Bristling

A more polished answer using ctypes can be seen at https://mcmap.net/q/298084/-find-system-folder-locations-in-python – Bristling

Answer 2

I've heard of 2 ways of doing this. First:

from win32com.shell import shell
shell.SHGetSpecialFolderPath(0,shellcon.CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU)

Second, using the WScript.Shell object (source : http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00992.html):

import win32com.client
objShell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
allUserProgramsMenu = objShell.SpecialFolders("AllUsersPrograms")
userMenu = objShell.SpecialFolders("StartMenu")

Another source: http://blogs.msdn.com/saveenr/archive/2005/12/28/creating-a-start-menu-shortcut-with-powershell-and-python.aspx

Cholecystotomy

The "Another source" link had everything I was looking for! :) – Troostite

first example is incomplete, shellcon is not defined. The import line is supposed to be from win32com.shell import shell, shellcon maybe? – Bristling

Answer 3

Also, CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU is for all user startup and CSIDL_STARTMENU for current user startup.

Eunaeunice