Select either a file or folder from the same dialog in .NET

c# .net vb.net winforms openfiledialog
barry picture barry · Jan 9, 2009 · Viewed 31.7k times · Source

Is there an "easy" way to select either a file OR a folder from the same dialog?

In many apps I create I allow for both files or folders as input. Until now i always end up creating a switch to toggle between file or folder selection dialogs or stick with drag-and-drop functionality only.

Since this seems such a basic thing i would imagine this has been created before, but googling does not result in much information. So it looks like i would need to start from scratch and create a custom selection Dialog, but I rather not introduce any problems by reinventing the wheel for such a trivial task.

Anybody any tips or existing solutions?

To keep the UI consistent it would be nice if it is possible to extend the OpenFileDialog (or the FolderBrowserDialog).

Answer

Hans Passant picture Hans Passant · Jan 10, 2009

Technically, it is possible. The shell dialog used by FolderBrowseDialog has the ability to return both files and folders. Unfortunately, that capability isn't exposed in .NET. Not even reflection can poke the required option flag.

To make it work, you'd have to P/Invoke SHBrowseForFolder() with the BIF_BROWSEINCLUDEFILES flag turned on in BROWSEINFO.ulFlags (value = 0x4000). The P/Invoke is gritty, it is best to copy and paste the code from another source or the FolderBrowseDialog class itself with Reflector's help.

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