2nd parameter "Arguments" of IApplicationActivationManager::ActivateApplication() syntax - c++

Question

I'm using IApplicationActivationManager::ActivateApplication() from MSDN ActivateApplication API
to write a console app EXE (VC++) which launches a "Photos metro app & displays a PNG image". Here is teh code snippet. It's activating the "Photos metro application" but not able to display the image using the "Photos app".
CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_MULTITHREADED);
LPCWSTR appId = L"Microsoft.Windows.Photos_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App";
LPCWSTR imageArg = L" C:\\data\\Users\\Public\\Pictures\\image123.png";
IApplicationActivationManager* paam = NULL;
HRESULT hr = E_FAIL;
__try
{
hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_ApplicationActivationManager, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_PPV_ARGS(&paam));
if (FAILED(hr))
{
cout << "Error creating CoCreateINstance & HR is" <<hr<< endl;
return 0;
}
DWORD pid = 0;
hr = paam->ActivateApplication(appId, imageArg, AO_NONE, &pid);
if (FAILED(hr))
{
cout << "Error in ActivateApplication call & HR is " <<hr<< endl;
return 0;
}
cout << hex << hr;
if (hr == 0)
wprintf(L"Activated %s with pid %d\r\n", appId, pid);
}
__finally
{
if (paam) paam->Release();
}
CoUninitialize();
I'm sure the error is in the 2nd argument of the "ActivateApplication()" function, where I'm giving the argument. I tried different ways of giving arguments like :
LPCWSTR imageArg = L"
C:\data\Users\Public\Pictures\image123.png"; OR
LPCWSTR imageArg = L"-
C:\data\Users\Public\Pictures\image123.png";
LPCWSTR
imageArg = L"C:\data\Users\Public\Pictures\image123.png";

Answer 1

To perform a file activation use the IApplicationActivationManager::ActivateForFile method.
You can create a ShellItem from a file path with SHCreateItemFromParsingName (the path is a parsing name) and can create a ShellItemArray from that with
SHCreateShellItemArrayFromShellItem
The Photos app won't listen for a file name on ActivateApplication's activation argument, and it wouldn't have access to the file by path if it did. The ActivateForFile method will convert the passed in ShellItems to StorageFiles which carry permissions to allow the app to open them.