Windows search - full text search in c#

Ivan Ičin picture Ivan Ičin · Jun 30, 2013 · Viewed 15.2k times · Source

I am looking for a code that gets results of full text search using Windows search (it should be available in Vista, 7 and 8 by default).

I have found some questions here and some texts on msdn, but none of them have some exact code that works. I have tried with Windows API Code Pack (as it is mentioned as one of the interfaces to Windows Search), but it returns results only for file names, not for full text.

Answer

Ivan Ičin picture Ivan Ičin · Jul 7, 2013

Here is the code that does work - in example I made it to search for the word "dummy" in the desktop folder:

string connectionString = "Provider=Search.CollatorDSO;Extended Properties=\"Application=Windows\"";
OleDbConnection connection = new OleDbConnection(connectionString);

string query = @"SELECT System.ItemName FROM SystemIndex " +
   @"WHERE scope ='file:" + System.Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Desktop) + "' and FREETEXT('dummy')";
OleDbCommand command = new OleDbCommand(query, connection);
connection.Open();

List<string> result = new List<string>();

OleDbDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader();
while (reader.Read())
{
    result.Add(reader.GetString(0));
}

connection.Close();