Getting the file clicked on in a window or desktop window - c++

Question

I'm new to shell programming and having trouble getting the filepath (or really, any information) about which item is being clicked on in a window (desktop or otherwise). I'm following the general path laid out by the answer to Can i use Global System Hooks to capture which file was clicked on? but I'm not having any luck.
The clicking is the smaller issue here, so I've just substituted random values (where I know the desktop is and where a file should be located) for the mouse position. (Regardless, it doesn't work even when I'm trying this out on my mouse's current position).
LVHITTESTINFO hitTest = { 0 };
hitTest.pt.x = 55;
hitTest.pt.y = 230;
hitTest.flags = LVHT_ONITEM;
currWindow = WindowFromPoint(pt);
int index = ListView_HitTest(currWindow, &hitTest);
//cout << index + " index";
//cout << hitTest.iItem + " iltem ";
if (index != -1) {
//char* itemText = new char[256];
std::vector<wchar_t> itemText(1024);
ListView_GetItemText(window, index, 0, &itemText[0], 256);
PIDLIST_ABSOLUTE filepidl;
SFGAOF out;
std::wstring strtext = std::wstring(itemText.begin(), itemText.end());
//cout << " ";
//cout << *(strtext.c_str()) + " ";
HRESULT parse = SHParseDisplayName(strtext.c_str(), NULL, &filepidl, SFGAO_CANDELETE, &out);
if (filepidl != NULL) {
LPTSTR filePath = new TCHAR[MAX_PATH];
BOOL getPath = SHGetPathFromIDList(filepidl, filePath);
cout << *filePath ;
}
}
This is part of my code. I think there's something wrong with how I'm getting the index of the file because it keeps returning 0 but I've been hacking at this for days and am stuck. The MSDN documentation is confusing to me at best.
Any help or insight would be appreciated! I can't find any example code of this online. Thanks!

Answer 1

Using the listview directly like this is not a good idea because Explorer is free to implement the shell view in any way it wants and in Windows 7 and later a Explorer window no longer uses a listview, it uses a custom control by default!
If you only care about the display name and invoking the default action you can use UI Automation, it should work on other types of windows/controls as well, not just a shell file list.
If you need to know the full path and other details you can use the IShellWindows interface. Examples can be found on Raymond Chens blog here and here...