If you are writing an installation program, generally you may need to create number of folders in the user’s machine and some of them may be shared over the network.

To establish this Windows provide an API NetShareAdd, which share folders over the network. The 3rd parameter (SHARE_INFO_2) of this function holds the information about the shared folder.

Here the function _wmkdir is used to create a shared directory. Once it successfully created, we can share the same. If the folder is already existed, it returns -1.

void CreateSharedFolder()
{
	CString SHARED_FOLDER_PATH = _T("C:\\SharedFolder");

	/* Create a new directory */
	_wmkdir(SHARED_FOLDER_PATH);

	NET_API_STATUS res;
	SHARE_INFO_2 p;
	DWORD parm_err = 0;

	/* Fill in the SHARE_INFO_2 structure. */

	//Shared folder name
	p.shi2_netname		= _T("TestShare");
	// disk drive
	p.shi2_type			= STYPE_DISKTREE;
	//comment about shared folder
	p.shi2_remark		= _T("My Shared Folder");
	// share-level security
	p.shi2_permissions	= ACCESS_READ;
	//max no of connections that the shared folder can accommodate
	p.shi2_max_uses		= 4;
	p.shi2_current_uses = 0;
	// local path for the shared folder
	p.shi2_path = SHARED_FOLDER_PATH.GetBuffer(SHARED_FOLDER_PATH.GetLength());
	// no password
	p.shi2_passwd		= NULL; 

	SHARED_FOLDER_PATH.ReleaseBuffer();

	/* Share the folder. */
	res=NetShareAdd(NULL, 2, (LPBYTE) &p, &parm_err);

	/* Check whether its succeeded or not. */
	if(res==0)
		AfxMessageBox(_T("SUCCEEDED"));
	else
		AfxMessageBox(_T("FAILED"));
}

Don’t forget to include the header files lm.h and direct.h for the functions NetShareAdd and _wmkdir respectively. Also include the Netapi32.lib too…