Does Slint implement a file picker?

[adrian5]

I haven't given Slint a try yet, but I was wondering about the degree of Desktop OS integration. Does Slint supply its own file picker dialog, hook into the one from the OS, or how is this handled?

[ogoffart]

Slint currently doesn't provide its own file picker, but relies on existing ones.
For example, in Rust, you can use the rfd crate.
(An example of that is cargo-ui which has a open file dialog when you press the "📂" button)

[xb284524239]

Hello @ogoffart
How can I open the file-dialog in a modal state?

let file = FileDialog::new()
            .set_parent(xxxx)
            .add_filter("Excel", &["xls", "xlsx"])
            .set_directory("/")
            .pick_file()
            .unwrap_or_default();

The FileDialog needs a parent window to open in a modal state, but I don't know how to get a parent window in Slint.

[ogoffart]

You can use Window::window_handle to get a raw window handle which can be used in set_parent

[xb284524239]

Thanks.

[ultimaweapon]

We have used rfd in the past and found out it block Slint event loop since it is never return until the user exit the browsing dialog. On Windows this probably fine but on Linux with Wayland the compositor will think your application is unresponsive and show the popup asking the user to wait or kill your application. We end up implementing our own file picker dialog to fix this issue.

[ogoffart]

You can open the FileDialog from a thread.
Or have you tried rfd::AsyncFileDialog and running that with slint::spawn_local ?

[ultimaweapon]

Nope we have not tried both of it. After evaluating rfd source I believe it is better for us to implement our own one. Can't remember exact reason behind this but we are happy with our own implementation.