How do I emulate sort by 'date' (the column in explorer) in C#?

Question

In explorer, you can sort files by the following metadata fields

date
date created
date modified
date taken
etc.

In C# I only have access to these

FileInfo.LastWriteTime
FileInfo.CreationTime and
FileInfo.LastAccessTime

I'm not quite sure what the 'date' column actually is in explorer, for some files it is equal to date modified, but for others 'date' is older than 'date modified'.

How do I sort by 'date' in C#?

http://superuser.com/questions/147525/what-is-the-date-column-in-windows-7-explorer-it-matches-no-date-column-from — David, Dec 26 '15 at 18:32
Enumerate the files in a directory. List each of those three FileInfo dates for each one. Compare to what you see in Explorer for the same files. — 15ee8f99-57ff-4f92-890c-b56153, Dec 26 '15 at 18:32
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1618863/how-to-sort-a-collection-by-datetime-in-c-sharp — Andrew, Dec 26 '15 at 18:32
@Andrew, I know how to sort a list. And to the downvoters, if I may, what is wrong with my question? — Simon Verbeke, Dec 26 '15 at 18:35
@SimonVerbeke, because question is poorly asked. It is very difficult to understand what do you want :) Now I understand your problem. — Andrew, Dec 26 '15 at 18:39

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 26 '15 at 18:35

'Date' in Explorer is almost always the same as 'Date Modified', the exception being if a 'Date' is exposed via a files Extended Properties.

To read the Extended Properties of a file requires using some COM components exposed by Shell32 - there's no way to do this in pure C#. There's a general purpose to answer on how to read a files extended properties via Shell32 here: Read/Write 'Extended' file properties (C#)

How do I emulate sort by 'date' (the column in explorer) in C#?

1 Answers1