Can a GTK File Chooser Dialog be part of a window? - c++

Question

File chooser dialogs look like this:
But is it possible to have a fullscreen window and have this take up, say, half of that window instead of being its own window?

Answer 1

You can use GtkFileChooserWidget (Gtkmm 2.24).
It's the basic widget that GtkFileChooserDialog uses. As the description says:
GtkFileChooserWidget is a widget suitable for selecting files. It is
the main building block of a GtkFileChooserDialog. Most applications
will only need to use the latter; you can use GtkFileChooserWidget as
part of a larger window if you have special needs.
Note that GtkFileChooserWidget does not have any methods of its own.
Instead, you should use the functions that work on a GtkFileChooser.

Answer 2

Note that if what you want to add to the FileChooserDialog isn't too complicated, you could consider adding the extra functionality to the dialog itself, instead of creating a new window (with all the bureaucracy involved).
You can access the top part of the dialog (above the Ok/Cancel buttons) by calling get_content_area (). You'll get a reference to a VBox, to which you can then add more items, such as load or save options, formats, etc.
Here's a very simple example which adds a check button to the dialog:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#
# test_filechooser_extension.py
#
# Copyright 2017 John Coppens <john#jcoppens.com>
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston,
# MA 02110-1301, USA.
#
#
from gi.repository import Gtk
class MainWindow(Gtk.Window):
def __init__(self):
super(MainWindow, self).__init__()
self.connect("destroy", lambda x: Gtk.main_quit())
btn = Gtk.Button("Click to activate file chooser")
btn.connect("clicked", self.button_clicked)
self.add(btn)
self.show_all()
def run(self):
Gtk.main()
def button_clicked(self, btn):
fc = Gtk.FileChooserDialog(
parent = self,
action = Gtk.FileChooserAction.OPEN,
buttons = ("Open", Gtk.ResponseType.OK,
"Cancel", Gtk.ResponseType.CANCEL))
area = fc.get_content_area()
option = Gtk.CheckButton("This could be an extra option")
area.pack_start(option, False, False, 0)
option.show()
fc.run()
fc.destroy()
def main(args):
mainwdw = MainWindow()
mainwdw.run()
return 0
if __name__ == '__main__':
import sys
sys.exit(main(sys.argv))
Note that it is necessary to add .show() to the added widgets.