How to get attribute of a directory like last access and last modify - c++

Question

I wanted to get timestamps of a directory and then show it to the user. I have written the following function, but it doesn't work when I give a full path of a directory to present its timestamp like access time. What should I do to fix this issue? I didn't know how should I open a directory and get information about its timestamps correctly for regular files my code works fine but when I wanted to extract information about directory it doesn't work.
#include <windows.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <strsafe.h>
BOOL GetLastWriteTimeDirectory(HANDLE arg_h_file, LPSTR arg_lpsz_string, DWORD arg_dw_size)
{
FILETIME ft_CreateTime, ft_AccessTime, ft_WriteTime;
SYSTEMTIME st_UTC, st_Local;
DWORD dw_Return;
// Retrieve the file times for the file.
if (!GetFileTime(arg_h_file, &ft_CreateTime, &ft_AccessTime, &ft_WriteTime))
{
return FALSE;
}
// Convert the last-write time to local time.
FileTimeToSystemTime(&ft_WriteTime, &st_UTC);
SystemTimeToTzSpecificLocalTime(NULL, &st_UTC, &st_Local);
// Build a string showing the date and time.
dw_Return = StringCchPrintfA(arg_lpsz_string, arg_dw_size, "%02d/%02d/%d %02d:%02d", st_Local.wMonth, st_Local.wDay, st_Local.wYear, st_Local.wHour, st_Local.wMinute);
if (S_OK == dw_Return)
{
return TRUE;
}
else
{
return FALSE;
}
}
bool AttributeLastAccessDirectory(const char* arg_path)
{
HANDLE handleFile;
char bufferLastAccessTime[MAX_PATH];
char pathDirectory[MAX_PATH];
strcpy(pathDirectory, arg_path);
handleFile = CreateFileA(pathDirectory, GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, NULL);
if (handleFile == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
{
return false;
}
if (GetLastWriteTimeDirectory(handleFile, bufferLastAccessTime, MAX_PATH))
{
printf("\n\t\t");
printf("%s", "Last Accessed: \t");
printf("%s\n", bufferLastAccessTime);
CloseHandle(handleFile);
return true;
}
CloseHandle(handleFile);
return false;
}
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
AttributeLastAccessDirectory("C:\\Users\\mkahs\\Desktop\\Sample\\");
return 0;
}

Answer 1

According to the documentation for CreateFileA:
To open a directory using CreateFile, specify the FILE_FLAG_BACKUP_SEMANTICS flag as part of dwFlagsAndAttributes. Appropriate security checks still apply when this flag is used without SE_BACKUP_NAME and SE_RESTORE_NAME privileges.
Your CreateFileA function call currently sets the dwFlagsAndAttributes parameter (the sixth parameter) to 0. Setting it to FILE_FLAG_BACKUP_SEMANTICS should fix the problem.
Also, there is no need for the pathDirectory array and the call to strcpy that sets it. The arg_path parameter can be passed to CreateFileA directly.