SetFileAttributesTransactedA function (winbase.h)

Article
06/01/2023

[Microsoft strongly recommends developers utilize alternative means to achieve your application’s needs. Many scenarios that TxF was developed for can be achieved through simpler and more readily available techniques. Furthermore, TxF may not be available in future versions of Microsoft Windows. For more information, and alternatives to TxF, please see Alternatives to using Transactional NTFS.]

Sets the attributes for a file or directory as a transacted operation.

Syntax

BOOL SetFileAttributesTransactedA(
  [in] LPCSTR lpFileName,
  [in] DWORD  dwFileAttributes,
  [in] HANDLE hTransaction
);

Parameters

[in] lpFileName

The name of the file whose attributes are to be set.

By default, the name is limited to MAX_PATH characters. To extend this limit to 32,767 wide characters, prepend "\\?\" to the path. For more information, see Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces.

Tip

Starting with Windows 10, Version 1607, you can opt-in to remove the MAX_PATH limitation without prepending "\\?\". See the "Maximum Path Length Limitation" section of Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces for details.

The file must reside on the local computer; otherwise, the function fails and the last error code is set to ERROR_TRANSACTIONS_UNSUPPORTED_REMOTE.

[in] dwFileAttributes

The file attributes to set for the file.

For a list of file attribute value and their descriptions, see File Attribute Constants. This parameter can be one or more values, combined using the bitwise-OR operator. However, all other values override FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL.

Not all attributes are supported by this function. For more information, see the Remarks section.

The following is a list of supported attribute values.

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE (32 (0x20))

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN (2 (0x2))

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL (128 (0x80))

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NOT_CONTENT_INDEXED (8192 (0x2000))

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_OFFLINE (4096 (0x1000))

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY (1 (0x1))

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM (4 (0x4))

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_TEMPORARY (256 (0x100))

[in] hTransaction

A handle to the transaction. This handle is returned by the CreateTransaction function.

Return value

If the function succeeds, the return value is nonzero.

If the function fails, the return value is zero. To get extended error information, call GetLastError.

Remarks

The following table describes how to set the attributes that cannot be set using SetFileAttributesTransacted. Note that these are not transacted operations.

Attribute	How to Set
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_COMPRESSED 0x800	To set a file's compression state, use the DeviceIoControl function with the FSCTL_SET_COMPRESSION operation.
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DEVICE 0x40	Reserved; do not use.
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY 0x10	Files cannot be converted into directories. To create a directory, use the CreateDirectory or CreateDirectoryEx function.
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ENCRYPTED 0x4000	To create an encrypted file, use the CreateFile function with the FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ENCRYPTED attribute. To convert an existing file into an encrypted file, use the EncryptFile function.
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_REPARSE_POINT 0x400	To associate a reparse point with a file or directory, use the DeviceIoControl function with the FSCTL_SET_REPARSE_POINT operation.
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SPARSE_FILE 0x200	To set a file's sparse attribute, use the DeviceIoControl function with the FSCTL_SET_SPARSE operation.

If a file is open for modification in a transaction, no other thread can successfully open the file for modification until the transaction is committed. If a transacted thread opens the file first, any subsequent threads that attempt to open the file for modification before the transaction is committed will receive a sharing violation. If a non-transacted thread opens the file for modification before the transacted thread does, and it is still open when the transacted thread attempts to open it, the transaction will receive the ERROR_TRANSACTIONAL_CONFLICT error.

For more information on transactions, see Transactional NTFS.

In Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, this function is supported by the following technologies.

Technology	Supported
Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0 protocol	No
SMB 3.0 Transparent Failover (TFO)	No
SMB 3.0 with Scale-out File Shares (SO)	No
Cluster Shared Volume File System (CsvFS)	No
Resilient File System (ReFS)	No

SMB 3.0 does not support TxF.

Transacted Operations

If a file is open for modification in a transaction, no other thread can open the file for modification until the transaction is committed. So if a transacted thread opens the file first, any subsequent threads that try modifying the file before the transaction is committed receives a sharing violation. If a non-transacted thread modifies the file before the transacted thread does, and the file is still open when the transaction attempts to open it, the transaction receives the error ERROR_TRANSACTIONAL_CONFLICT.

Note

The winbase.h header defines SetFileAttributesTransacted as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows Vista [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows Server 2008 [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	winbase.h (include Windows.h)
Library	Kernel32.lib
DLL	Kernel32.dll