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Gtk.FileChooserDialog

class — extends Dialog, Accessible, Buildable, ConstraintTarget, FileChooser, Native, Root, ShortcutManager

:::warning Deprecated since 4.10 This API is deprecated. :::

GtkFileChooserDialog is a dialog suitable for use with “File Open” or “File Save” commands.

An example GtkFileChooserDialog

This widget works by putting a FileChooserWidget inside a Dialog. It exposes the FileChooser interface, so you can use all of the FileChooser functions on the file chooser dialog as well as those for Dialog.

Note that GtkFileChooserDialog does not have any methods of its own. Instead, you should use the functions that work on a FileChooser.

If you want to integrate well with the platform you should use the FileChooserNative API, which will use a platform-specific dialog if available and fall back to GtkFileChooserDialog otherwise.

Typical usage

In the simplest of cases, you can the following code to use GtkFileChooserDialog to select a file for opening:

static void
on_open_response (GtkDialog *dialog,
                  int        response)
{
  if (response == GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT)
    {
      GtkFileChooser *chooser = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (dialog);

      g_autoptr(GFile) file = gtk_file_chooser_get_file (chooser);

      open_file (file);
    }

  gtk_window_destroy (GTK_WINDOW (dialog));
}

  // ...
  GtkWidget *dialog;
  GtkFileChooserAction action = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER_ACTION_OPEN;

  dialog = gtk_file_chooser_dialog_new ("Open File",
                                        parent_window,
                                        action,
                                        _("_Cancel"),
                                        GTK_RESPONSE_CANCEL,
                                        _("_Open"),
                                        GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT,
                                        NULL);

  gtk_window_present (GTK_WINDOW (dialog));

  g_signal_connect (dialog, "response",
                    G_CALLBACK (on_open_response),
                    NULL);

To use a dialog for saving, you can use this:

static void
on_save_response (GtkDialog *dialog,
                  int        response)
{
  if (response == GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT)
    {
      GtkFileChooser *chooser = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (dialog);

      g_autoptr(GFile) file = gtk_file_chooser_get_file (chooser);

      save_to_file (file);
    }

  gtk_window_destroy (GTK_WINDOW (dialog));
}

  // ...
  GtkWidget *dialog;
  GtkFileChooser *chooser;
  GtkFileChooserAction action = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER_ACTION_SAVE;

  dialog = gtk_file_chooser_dialog_new ("Save File",
                                        parent_window,
                                        action,
                                        _("_Cancel"),
                                        GTK_RESPONSE_CANCEL,
                                        _("_Save"),
                                        GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT,
                                        NULL);
  chooser = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (dialog);

  if (user_edited_a_new_document)
    gtk_file_chooser_set_current_name (chooser, _("Untitled document"));
  else
    gtk_file_chooser_set_file (chooser, existing_filename);

  gtk_window_present (GTK_WINDOW (dialog));

  g_signal_connect (dialog, "response",
                    G_CALLBACK (on_save_response),
                    NULL);

Setting up a file chooser dialog

There are various cases in which you may need to use a GtkFileChooserDialog:

In general, you should only cause the file chooser to show a specific folder when it is appropriate to use FileChooser.set_file, i.e. when you are doing a “Save As” command and you already have a file saved somewhere.

Response Codes

GtkFileChooserDialog inherits from Dialog, so buttons that go in its action area have response codes such as ResponseType.ACCEPT and ResponseType.CANCEL. For example, you could call FileChooserDialog.new as follows:

GtkWidget *dialog;
GtkFileChooserAction action = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER_ACTION_OPEN;

dialog = gtk_file_chooser_dialog_new ("Open File",
                                      parent_window,
                                      action,
                                      _("_Cancel"),
                                      GTK_RESPONSE_CANCEL,
                                      _("_Open"),
                                      GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT,
                                      NULL);

This will create buttons for “Cancel” and “Open” that use predefined response identifiers from ResponseType. For most dialog boxes you can use your own custom response codes rather than the ones in ResponseType, but GtkFileChooserDialog assumes that its “accept”-type action, e.g. an “Open” or “Save” button, will have one of the following response codes:

This is because GtkFileChooserDialog must intercept responses and switch to folders if appropriate, rather than letting the dialog terminate — the implementation uses these known response codes to know which responses can be blocked if appropriate.

To summarize, make sure you use a predefined response code when you use GtkFileChooserDialog to ensure proper operation.

CSS nodes

GtkFileChooserDialog has a single CSS node with the name window and style class .filechooser.