How to get human readable name for RawInput HID device?

I've been having a similar problem and believe I found a potential solution.

It seems you must call CreateFile with the name that RawInput provides from calling GetRawInputDeviceInfo with RIDI_DEVICENAME as the uiCommand parameter's argument. This will give you a handle to the device with which you may call HidD_GetProductString.

wchar_t DeviceName[126];HANDLE HIDHandle = CreateFile(RawInputDeviceName, GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE, FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, NULL, NULL);if(HIDHandle){    BOOLEAN Result = HidD_GetProductString(HIDHandle, DeviceName, sizeof(wchar_t) * 126);    CloseHandle(HIDHandle);}

However, it seems that HidD_GetProductString fails on a majority of the devices attached on my system and only seems to succeed for my USB keyboard and a web camera. It does not succeed for my USB mouse. I have not yet discovered why this is, but perhaps my progress will aid you.

You get a handle to the top level collection as explained here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff538731%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

For HID devices you can use HidD_GetProductString but keyboard and mouse are not avalible via HID API on Windows and exposed as separate device types: GUID_DEVINTERFACE_KEYBOARD/GUID_DEVINTERFACE_MOUSE (they cannot be directly read by user-mode app by security reasons).

You can get their device info from device interface symbolic link like this:

• use CM_Get_Device_Interface_Property or SetupDiGetDeviceInterfaceProperty with DEVPKEY_Device_InstanceId to get device instance id (one device can have multiple interfaces).

• after you have device instance id you can use CM_Get_DevNode_Property or SetupDiGetDeviceProperty with DEVPKEY_NAME to get localized friendly name of a device (which is shown in Device Manager).

Here is example code via CM_* API from my test repo:

bool FillDeviceInfo(const std::wstring& deviceInterfaceName){    // you need to provide deviceInterfaceName    // example from my system: `\\?\HID#VID_203A&PID_FFFC&MI_01#7&2de99099&0&0000#{378de44c-56ef-11d1-bc8c-00a0c91405dd}`    DEVPROPTYPE propertyType;    ULONG propertySize = 0;    CONFIGRET cr = ::CM_Get_Device_Interface_PropertyW(deviceInterfaceName.c_str(), &DEVPKEY_Device_InstanceId, &propertyType, nullptr, &propertySize, 0);    if (cr != CR_BUFFER_SMALL)        return false;    std::wstring deviceId;    deviceId.resize(propertySize);    cr = ::CM_Get_Device_Interface_PropertyW(deviceInterfaceName.c_str(), &DEVPKEY_Device_InstanceId, &propertyType, (PBYTE)deviceId.data(), &propertySize, 0);    if (cr != CR_SUCCESS)        return false;    // here is deviceId will contain device instance id    // example from my system: `HID\VID_203A&PID_FFFC&MI_01\7&2de99099&0&0000`    DEVINST devInst;    cr = ::CM_Locate_DevNodeW(&devInst, (DEVINSTID_W)deviceId.c_str(), CM_LOCATE_DEVNODE_NORMAL);    if (cr != CR_SUCCESS)        return false;    propertySize = 0;    cr = ::CM_Get_DevNode_PropertyW(devInst, &DEVPKEY_NAME, &propertyType, nullptr, &propertySize, 0);    if (cr != CR_BUFFER_SMALL)        return false;    std::wstring friendlyString;    friendlyString.resize(propertySize);    cr = ::CM_Get_DevNode_PropertyW(devInst, &DEVPKEY_NAME, &propertyType, (PBYTE)friendlyString.data(), &propertySize, 0);    // here is friendlyString will contain localized device friendly name    propertySize = 0;    cr = ::CM_Get_DevNode_PropertyW(devInst, &DEVPKEY_Device_Manufacturer, &propertyType, nullptr, &propertySize, 0);    if (cr != CR_BUFFER_SMALL)        return false;    std::wstring manufacturer;    manufacturer.resize(propertySize);    cr = ::CM_Get_DevNode_PropertyW(devInst, &DEVPKEY_Device_Manufacturer, &propertyType, (PBYTE)manufacturer.data(), &propertySize, 0);    // here is manufacturer will contain localized device "manufacturer-identifier"    return true;}

Update: it turned out that HidD_GetProductString and family is working for HID keyboard and mouse. You just need to open its device interface (path) as read-only. See https://github.com/DJm00n/RawInputDemo/blob/master/RawInputLib/RawInputDevice.cpp#L77-L86 for example.