Introduction
In day to day life, when one wants to know the size of a folder, (s)he has to right click on the folder name and has to choose the Properties. Using this DLL, one can view the folder size as one of the columns of the Explorer as shown in the image. We also have the facility to sort according to the folder size. (I did not do anything to sort, it is done by Explorer. :))
This class implements the Shell interface called IColumnProvider. Using this interface, one can customize the Explorer's Details view. This class adds one more column to the Details view, which displays the consolidated folder size.
To build this project, you must install Microsoft Platform SDK, or click here [53.5 KB] to download SHLOBJ.h.
How to Use the DLL
Well, if you build the project, you need not do anything, since the IDE automatically registers the DLL. If demo project is downloaded, then unzip the DLL and register it using the command "regsvr32 <Path of the unzipped DLL>". E.g., Regsvr32 c:\DirSize.DLL, if the DLL is present in C:.
Scope for Further Improvements
This code can be modified to display the number of files/folders in the folder. Or maybe, you can pack two more classes to display columns for number of files and number of folders into the same DLL to do so.
Performance Issues
When the user selects the "Folder Size" item from the Explorer context menu, the Explorer starts calculating the folder size by traversing all the files and nested folders. First time, it might take some minutes depending upon the contents of the folder. But all the operations are done in the background (Explorer is smart enough!.. Ehh). So this won't stop you from traversing through other files.
