Hi all,

I've proposed a PR with some cleanups in this respect

https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/1941

This is the proposed replacement API that returns file references instead of streams or file names.

"Get existing file reference"

UIManager default

chooseExistingFileReference: 'title'

extensions: nil

path: FileSystem workingDirectory.

"Get existing file reference filtering by extensions"

UIManager default

chooseExistingFileReference: 'title'

extensions: #('log')

path: FileSystem workingDirectory.

"Get existing file reference to file"

UIManager default

chooseExistingFileReference: 'title'

extensions: nil

path: FileSystem workingDirectory / 'PharoDebug.log'.

"Get file reference for save (not necessarily existing)"

UIManager default

chooseForSaveFileReference: 'title'

extensions: #('log')

path: 'PharoDebuasdg.log'.

On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 3:11 PM Guillermo Polito <[hidden email]> wrote:

Ok, so can we agree on deprecating the non compatible methods and redirect the user to the new ones?

To me, the problem with returning a stream is that from a user perspective you don't know:

 - is the file encoded or binary

 - if it is encoded, in which encoding?

 - if i receive an open file stream, and I want to delete that file I have to close it, retrieve the file, delete it?

 - IMHO, what is the worst: whose responsibility is it to close the file?

On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 10:43 PM Peter Uhnak <[hidden email]> wrote:

>  It should return a FileReference, not an open stream. I believe there are methods that do that.

There are different APIs for that.

fileOpen*, as the name implies, _opens the file_ and returns the stream. (I think this should be the case for fileSave*)

If you want file reference, then you can use e.g.

UIManager default chooseFileMatching: #() label: nil

or `chooseFileMatching:label:`, `chooseFileName:extensions:path:preview:`, `chooseFullFileName:extensions:path:preview:`, `chooseFullFileNameMatching:label:`.

Also some methods for selecting directories (`chooseDirectory:path:`, chooseDirectory:from:`, ...)

iirc some of them actually return String (file path) instead of FileReference. ( https://gist.github.com/peteruhnak/8ac6667b8eb11daee71517d0172b7355#file-ui-manager-md )

So it can be confusing, but the API is already available.

Also iirc UIManager should be preferred over UITheme builder.

Peter

On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 9:57 PM Sven Van Caekenberghe <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On 6 Sep 2018, at 21:37, Torsten Bergmann <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> A question to those who worked on the new streams for Pharo 7:
>
>
> In PHARO 6 I used the following expression to open a file dialog and let the user choose
> a binary file:
>
>    s := UITheme builder fileOpen: 'Choose a file' extensions: #('exe').
>
> This returned
> - either nil (when file dialog was canceled)
> - a "MultiByteFileStream" instance when a file was selected
>
> The MultiByteFileStream instance already had the name of the file (= full path) and I was
> able to query it for further use:
>
> s := UITheme builder fileOpen: 'Choose a file' extensions: #('exe').
> s name inspect
>
> (for instance to display which file is processed in a window by showing the full path)
>
>
>
> Now in PHARO 7 same expression returns an instance of ZnCharacterReadStream (as MultiByteFileStream
> is deprecated):
>
> s := UITheme builder fileOpen: 'Choose a file' extensions: #('exe').
>
> and  ZnCharacterReadStream  does not understand #name - and in fact the info about the name is
> totally lost/not available. To me this looks missing/broken.
>
> So what is the recommended way in Pharo 7 to open a file dialog, let the use choose a file
> and get a file stream but also the name? IMHO this is either broken or missing...
>
> Thanks
> T.

It should return a FileReference, not an open stream. I believe there are methods that do that.

But that is an incompatible API change (same selector, different return type). So hard to decide.

--

Guille Polito Research Engineer Centre de Recherche en Informatique, Signal et Automatique de Lille CRIStAL - UMR 9189 French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr Web: http://guillep.github.io Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13

--

Guille Polito Research Engineer Centre de Recherche en Informatique, Signal et Automatique de Lille CRIStAL - UMR 9189 French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr Web: http://guillep.github.io Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13