How can I prevent an exception when I cancel an openfiledialog?

Fuzz Evans picture Fuzz Evans · Jan 5, 2012 · Viewed 17.8k times · Source

My program has a button which when clicked opens an openfiledialog to choose a picture:

private string ChoosePicture()
{         
    fDialog.Title = "Select Picture";
    fDialog.Filter = "Image Files (*.bmp, *.gif, *.jpg)|*.bmp; *.gif*;*.jpg";
    fDialog.InitialDirectory = "C:";
    fDialog.ShowDialog();

    fDialog.AddExtension = true;
    fDialog.CheckFileExists = true;
    fDialog.CheckPathExists = true;

    //returns a string for the directory
    return fDialog.FileName.ToString();
}

Using a check on the dialogresult box hasn't resolved my issue either:

fDialog.AddExtension = true;
fDialog.CheckFileExists = true;
fDialog.CheckPathExists = true;

DialogResult res = fDialog.ShowDialog();
if (res == DialogResult.OK)
{                
    //returns a string for the directory
    return fDialog.FileName.ToString();
}

return null; 

The code works if I do choose a picture and complete the file selection. However if I cancel the process at any point in between I get the exception "The path is not of a legal form". I am not sure which part I imagine I could take care of this with a try-catch, however I'm not positive which part is causing the issue? If I put a try catch around the call to the ChoosePicture() method, I can at least stop it from crashing the program but the exception is still being thrown when no picture is selected in the fdialogbox.

Answer

Anthony Shaw picture Anthony Shaw · Jan 5, 2012
DialogResult result = fileDialog.ShowDialog();
if (result == DialogResult.OK) {

     //returns a string for the directory
     return fDialog.FileName;
}

return null; //not sure what you will return if they cancel

also, FileName is already a string, so no need to use .ToString() on it

EDIT: fixed indenting