Windows API Reference

Welcome to the comprehensive reference for the Windows API. This section provides detailed documentation, code samples, and technical articles for developers building applications for the Windows operating system.

Core APIs

Kernel Services

Process Management e.g., CreateProcess()
APIs for creating, managing, and terminating processes.
Thread Management e.g., CreateThread()
APIs for creating, managing, and synchronizing threads.
Memory Management e.g., VirtualAllocEx()
APIs for allocating, deallocating, and managing virtual memory.
File I/O e.g., CreateFile(), ReadFile()
APIs for reading from and writing to files and devices.

Registry Management

Registry Functions e.g., RegOpenKeyEx(), RegSetValueEx()
APIs for accessing and manipulating the Windows Registry.

Graphics & Multimedia

DirectX

DXGI (DirectX Graphics Infrastructure) e.g., IDXGIFactory1::EnumAdapters()
Provides low-level hardware access for graphics and compute.
Direct3D 11 e.g., D3D11CreateDevice()
APIs for rendering 2D and 3D graphics.
Direct2D e.g., D2D1CreateFactory()
APIs for high-performance 2D graphics rendering.

Windows Media Foundation

Media Foundation Interfaces e.g., IMFMediaSession
APIs for rich media playback and processing.

Networking

Winsock

Winsock Functions e.g., socket(), connect()
APIs for network programming using the Windows Sockets API.

HTTP APIs

HTTP Server API e.g., HttpOpenRequest()
APIs for building HTTP servers and clients.

Security

Cryptography

Cryptography Next Generation (CNG) e.g., BCryptOpenAlgorithmProvider()
Modern cryptographic algorithms and providers.
CryptoAPI e.g., CryptAcquireContext()
Legacy cryptographic services.

Access Control

Access Control Lists (ACLs) e.g., SetSecurityInfo()
APIs for managing permissions and access rights.

System Services

Service Control Manager

Service Functions e.g., StartService()
APIs for managing Windows services.

COM (Component Object Model)

COM Core Functions e.g., CoInitializeEx()
APIs for working with COM objects and interfaces.

UI Controls

Win32 Controls

Button Controls e.g., CreateWindow() with "BUTTON"
Standard button elements for user interaction.
Edit Controls e.g., CreateWindow() with "EDIT"
Text input fields.
List-View Controls e.g., CreateWindow() with "SysListView32"
Displaying lists of items with columns.

Windows UI Library (WinUI)

WinUI 3 Controls e.g., Microsoft.UI.Xaml.Controls.Button
Modern, flexible UI controls for desktop applications.

Explore further to find the specific APIs you need to build powerful Windows applications.