Get Large File Icons

ONJava.com -- Hacking Swing with Undocumented Classes and Properties: "Get Large File Icons
Not to leave Windows lonely, here is an undocumented class that will let you obtain large desktop icons and other file information. The FileSystemView only provides access to file icons of a 'default' size, which usually means 16 by 16 pixels. If you look at your operating system desktop, however, you may see icons that are much bigger, with more detail. There is no standardized way of getting to the larger icons, but on Windows you can use the hidden class called sun.awt.shell.ShellFolder to retrieve larger (32 by 32) desktop file icons. This class is only available in Sun's JVM, so it won't work with other vendors, or on other platforms.




The code below will take a filename and show the file's large icon in a window.

public class LargeIconTest {

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
// Create a File instance of an existing file
File file = new File(args[0]);

// Get metadata and create an icon
sun.awt.shell.ShellFolder sf =
sun.awt.shell.ShellFolder.getShellFolder(file);
Icon icon = new ImageIcon(sf.getIcon(true));
System.out.println('type = ' + sf.getFolderType());

// show the icon
JLabel label = new JLabel(icon);
JFrame frame = new JFrame();
frame.getContentPane().add(label);
frame.pack();
frame.show();

}
}
ShellFolder is a wrapper for the metadata of the selected file. From this object, you can retrieve both the icon and a text description of the file's type. If you run this on an MP3 file, it might print the string "type = MPEG Layer 3 Audio" and show a 32 by 32 pixel iTunes MP3 icon.