I am writing an application that includes processing of files of a custom file format but would like to associate with my application such that when a supported file is double clicked on in Windows Explorer it can automatically calls my application's open event.
Please note the application is a .NET application. If you could point me to a reference I need to add or a class I have missed please let me know.
You probably know, that associating a double click with LAUNCHING an application is relatively easy. If not, here is a good SO answer.
The problem is, you don't want to LAUNCH a new application, rather raise an event in an existing one. Well, I don't know if there is a direct way for that, but you could write a small console executable, associate THAT with the file type, and in that application fire off a call to your main one (I'm thinking WCF Named Pipes would be the easiest to use), and at startup of your main application start listening to the pipe. If a message comes in (containing the path of the file, most likely), raise the internal Open event of your application, with whatever information passed as parameter.
Hope this helps.
You might want to look here for how to handle single instance:
https://codereview.stackexchange.com/a/25667
Associating filetype with application is pretty easy as well, and you can even have your application do the association on first run.
