Windows Search Developer's Guide
Third parties can create applications that query the index for data programmatically and can extend Windows Search to index data from custom file formats and data stores. To create Windows Search applications, third-party developers must first implement a Shell data store to a achieve a reasonable user experience. For more information, see Implementing the Basic Folder Object Interfaces.
You must also download the Windows SDK for the Windows Search libraries. The Windows Search Code Samples contains useful code samples and an interoperability assembly for developing with managed code.
This section is organized as follows:
- Managing the Index
- Querying the Index Programmatically
- Extending the Index
- Extending Language Resources
Additional Resources
- For community-supported question and discussion message boards on Search technologies, see Microsoft Q&A.
- To download the Search Code Samples:
- To download the Windows SDK:
- For Windows 10: Windows 10 SDK
- For Windows 7: Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework