How To Pick Text File In Windows 10

Introduction

In Windows 10 we have OpenFileDialog which opens a dialog to pick the files. Here we are going to pick the text file in Windows 10.

Create a new Windows 10 project and create a button and image control to perform File Picker operation.

Firstly, create a new instance for FileOpenPicker as in the following code snippet:

FileOpenPicker openPicker = new FileOpenPicker();

Next, we have to set file picker ViewMode, you could ignore this, but if you would like to add, there are two options, such as List and Thumbnail. Here I will set thumbnail.

openPicker.ViewMode = PickerViewMode.Thumbnail;

Then set the suggested location as you wish. I am going to set the default location as a document library.

openPicker.SuggestedStartLocation = PickerLocationId.DocumentsLibrary;

We need to add FileTypeFilter; it is a mandatory field that you should add. It requires at least one type.

The FileTypeFilter is a read-only collection. We would be able to add values.

Here I am setting filter type for .txt files.

openPicker.FileTypeFilter.Add(".txt");

Finally, we are going to show the file picker dialog as in the following code snippet and we have the option to select single or multiple file selection.

StorageFile file = await openPicker.PickSingleFileAsync();

Finally, we are going to read the selected file using a stream and assign it to the text block.

var stream = await file.OpenAsync(Windows.Storage.FileAccessMode.Read);
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream.AsStream()))
{
textBlockShow.Text = reader.ReadToEnd();
}

The whole code looks like the following code:

private async void buttonPick_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
FileOpenPicker openPicker = new FileOpenPicker();
openPicker.ViewMode = PickerViewMode.Thumbnail;
openPicker.SuggestedStartLocation = PickerLocationId.DocumentsLibrary;
openPicker.FileTypeFilter.Add(".txt");
StorageFile file = await openPicker.PickSingleFileAsync();
if(file != null)
{
var stream = await file.OpenAsync(Windows.Storage.FileAccessMode.Read);
using(StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream.AsStream()))
{
textBlockShow.Text = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
}
else
{}
}

Now run, debug and run the app and here is the following output,

Summary

In this article, we learned about how to pick the text files in Windows 10.