How to get path of Start Menu's Programs directory?

Question

...for current user? for all users?

I\'m working an a small program which needs to create links in the start menu. Currently I\'m hardcoding like below, but it only

Answer 1

I've heard of 2 ways of doing this. First:

from win32com.shell import shell
shell.SHGetSpecialFolderPath(0,shellcon.CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU)

Second, using the WScript.Shell object (source : http://www.mail-archive.com/python-win32@python.org/msg00992.html):

import win32com.client
objShell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
allUserProgramsMenu = objShell.SpecialFolders("AllUsersPrograms")
userMenu = objShell.SpecialFolders("StartMenu")

Another source: http://blogs.msdn.com/saveenr/archive/2005/12/28/creating-a-start-menu-shortcut-with-powershell-and-python.aspx

Answer 2

A friend, Luke Pinner of Environment.gov.au, gave a solution by email which uses a core module (python 2.5+). Believed to be multi-lingual as the return from the API call is unicode. Tested on Win7 with Japanese locale, and on another us-english machine by manually changing Start Menu to point to %USERPROFILE%\Startmenü

''' Get windows special folders without pythonwin
    Example:
            import specialfolders
            start_programs = specialfolders.get(specialfolders.PROGRAMS)

Code is public domain, do with it what you will. 

Luke Pinner - Environment.gov.au, 2010 February 10
'''

#Imports use _syntax to mask them from autocomplete IDE's
import ctypes as _ctypes
from ctypes.wintypes import HWND as _HWND, HANDLE as _HANDLE,DWORD as _DWORD,LPCWSTR as _LPCWSTR,MAX_PATH as _MAX_PATH, create_unicode_buffer as _cub
_SHGetFolderPath = _ctypes.windll.shell32.SHGetFolderPathW

#public special folder constants
DESKTOP=                             0
PROGRAMS=                            2
MYDOCUMENTS=                         5
FAVORITES=                           6
STARTUP=                             7
RECENT=                              8
SENDTO=                              9
STARTMENU=                          11
MYMUSIC=                            13
MYVIDEOS=                           14
NETHOOD=                            19
FONTS=                              20
TEMPLATES=                          21
ALLUSERSSTARTMENU=                  22
ALLUSERSPROGRAMS=                   23
ALLUSERSSTARTUP=                    24
ALLUSERSDESKTOP=                    25
APPLICATIONDATA=                    26
PRINTHOOD=                          27
LOCALSETTINGSAPPLICATIONDATA=       28
ALLUSERSFAVORITES=                  31
LOCALSETTINGSTEMPORARYINTERNETFILES=32
COOKIES=                            33
LOCALSETTINGSHISTORY=               34
ALLUSERSAPPLICATIONDATA=            35

def get(intFolder):
    _SHGetFolderPath.argtypes = [_HWND, _ctypes.c_int, _HANDLE, _DWORD, _LPCWSTR]
    auPathBuffer = _cub(_MAX_PATH)
    exit_code=_SHGetFolderPath(0, intFolder, 0, 0, auPathBuffer)
    return auPathBuffer.value

Answer 3

Also, CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU is for all user startup and CSIDL_STARTMENU for current user startup.