How to convert C# code that uses Shell COM to F#?

Question

I have the following C# method:

private static bool IsLink(string shortcutFilename)
{
    var pathOnly = Path.GetDirectoryName(shortcutFilename);
    var filenameOnly = Path.GetFileName(shortcutFilename);

    var shell = new Shell32.Shell();
    var folder = shell.NameSpace(pathOnly);
    var folderItem = folder.ParseName(filenameOnly);
    return folderItem != null && folderItem.IsLink;
}

I have tried converting this to F# as:

let private isLink filename =
    let pathOnly = Path.GetDirectoryName(filename)
    let filenameOnly = Path.GetFileName(filename)
    let shell = new Shell32.Shell()
    let folder = shell.NameSpace(pathOnly)
    let folderItem = folder.ParseName(filenameOnly)
    folderItem <> null && folderItem.IsLink

It however reports an error for the let shell = new Shell32.Shell() line, saying that new cannot be used on interface types.

Have I just made a silly syntactic mistake, or is there extra work needed to access COM from F#?

Answer 1

I don't know enough about the F# compiler but your comments makes it obvious enough. The C# and VB.NET compilers have a fair amount of explicit support for COM built-in. Note that your statement uses the new operator on an interface type, Shell32.Shell in the interop library looks like this:

[ComImport]
[Guid("286E6F1B-7113-4355-9562-96B7E9D64C54")]
[CoClass(typeof(ShellClass))]
public interface Shell : IShellDispatch6 {}

IShellDispatch6 is the real interface type, you can also see the IShellDispatch through IShellDispatch5 interfaces. That's versioning across the past 20 years at work, COM interface definitions are immutable since changing them almost always causes an undiagnosable hard crash at runtime.

The [CoClass] attribute is the important one for this story, that's what the C# compiler goes looking for you use new on a [ComImport] interface type. Tells it to create the object by creating an instance of Shell32.ShellClass instance and obtain the Shell interface. What the F# compiler doesn't do.

ShellClass is a fake class, it is auto-generated by the type library importer. COM never exposes concrete classes, it uses a hyper-pure interface-based programming paradigm. Objects are always created by an object factory, CoCreateInstance() is the workhorse for that. Itself a convenience function, the real work is done by the universal IClassFactory interface, hyper-pure style. Every COM coclass implements its CreateInstance() method.

The type library importer makes ShellClass look like this:

[ComImport]
[TypeLibType(TypeLibTypeFlags.FCanCreate)]
[ClassInterface(ClassInterfaceType.None)]
[Guid("13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000")]
public class ShellClass : IShellDispatch6, Shell {
    // Methods
    [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.InternalCall, MethodCodeType=MethodCodeType.Runtime), DispId(0x60040000)]
    public virtual extern void AddToRecent([In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Struct)] object varFile, [In, Optional, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.BStr)] string bstrCategory);
    // Etc, many more methods...
}

Lots of fire and movement, none of it should ever be used. The only thing that really matters is the [Guid] attribute, that provides the CLSID that CoCreateInstance() needs. It also needs the IID, the [Guid] of the interface, provided by the interface declaration.

So the workaround in F# is to create the Shell32.ShellClass object, just like the C# compiler does implicitly. While technically you can keep the reference in a ShellClass variable, you should strongly favor the interface type instead. The COM way, the pure way, it avoids this kind of problem. Ultimately it is the CLR that gets the job done, it recognizes the [ClassInterface] attribute on the ShellClass class declaration in its new operator implementation. The more explicit way in .NET is to use Type.GetTypeFromCLSID() and Activator.CreateInstance(), handy when you only have the Guid of the coclass.