Activate 'View Item Description' programmatically?

Question

I have created an ArcMap add-in for browsing data layers and adding them to the TOC. I would like to add a button that when clicked will open the selected layers item description (before it is added to the TOC) however I can't seem to find any documentation on how to accomplish this.

Basically I want the same functionality as the 'View Item Description...' in the 'Data' menu when right clicking a layer in the TOC. So when the button is pressed the item description window is opened. Any one have any ideas I thought for sure there would be an easy way to do this?

Answer 1

Below is some VBA code that shows you how to open the Item Description window from the first layer in the TOC.

Public Sub OpenItemDescription()
 ' Get Application
 Dim pApp As IApplication
 Set pApp = Application
 ' Get Map document
 Dim pMXD As IMxDocument
 Set pMXD = ThisDocument
 ' Get Map
 Dim pmap As IMap
 Set pmap = pMXD.FocusMap
 ' Get first layer in TOC
 Dim pLayer As ILayer
 Set pLayer = pmap.Layer(0)
 ' Get Dataset
 Dim pDataset As IDataset
 Set pDataset = pLayer
 Dim pName As IName
 Set pName = pDataset.FullName
 Dim pFeatureClassName As IFeatureClassName
 Set pFeatureClassName = pName
 ' Get Metadata for dataset
 Dim pMetaData As IMetadata
 Set pMetaData = pFeatureClassName
 ' Open window
 Dim pMetadataViewWindow As IMetadataViewWindow2
 Set pMetadataViewWindow = New MetadataViewWindow
 With pMetadataViewWindow
 Set .Application = pApp
 Set .Layer = pLayer
 Set .Metadata = pMetaData.Metadata
 .Show True
 End With
End Sub

Edit

Here is the code in c#.

 private void viewMetadataButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
 {
 IGxLayer gxLayer = new GxLayerClass();
 IGxFile gxFile = gxLayer as IGxFile;
 gxFile.Path = @lyrPath;
 ILayer layer = gxLayer.Layer as ILayer;
 IDataset pDataSet = (IDataset)layer;
 IName pName = (IName)pDataSet.FullName;
 IFeatureClassName pFeatureClassName = (IFeatureClassName)pName;
 IMetadata pMetadata = (IMetadata)pFeatureClassName;
 IMetadataViewWindow2 pMetadataViewWindow = (IMetadataViewWindow2) new MetadataViewWindow();
 pMetadataViewWindow.Application = ArcMap.Application;
 pMetadataViewWindow.Layer = layer;
 pMetadataViewWindow.Metadata_2 = pMetadata.Metadata;
 pMetadataViewWindow.Show(true);
 }

• landocalrissian: Thanks for this it looks like the IMetadataViewWindow classes are what I am looking for. I'll test it and update.
• landocalrissian: I basically used the code from 'Get Dataset' down and it worked great thanks. Aside from my code being in c# the only difference was that since my layer isn't yet in the TOC so I define ILayer differently.