File and Folder Dialogs

Sometimes your app needs to interact with the outside world—like opening a saved game, exporting a high score to a text file, or choosing a folder for your photos. In GooeyPie, we use File Windows for this.

These are “Native Dialogs”, meaning they will look exactly like the standard “Open” or “Save” windows you and your users are already used to on Windows, macOS, or Linux.

Creating a Dialog

Unlike standard widgets or popups, these dialogs are created directly from the gooeypie library itself, not your app object. They stay invisible in the background until you are ready to show them.

Window Type	Purpose
`OpenFileWindow`	Picking an existing file to open
`SaveFileWindow`	Choosing where to save a new file
`OpenFolderWindow`	Selecting an entire folder/directory

OpenFileWindow

open_file_window = gp.OpenFileWindow("Open File")
open_file_window.add_file_type("Python files", "*.py")
open_file_window.set_initial_folder('desktop')
open_file_window.open()

SaveFileWindow

save_file_window = gp.SaveFileWindow("Save File")
save_file_window.add_file_type("Text files", "*.txt")
save_file_window.set_initial_folder('desktop')
save_file_window.open()

OpenFolderWindow

open_folder_window = gp.OpenFolderWindow("Open Folder")
open_folder_window.set_initial_folder('desktop')
open_folder_window.open()

Opening and Getting Results

To actually show the window to the user, you must call the .open() method. This stops your app and waits until the user either picks something or hits “Cancel”.

Standard Result: Returns a string containing the full path to the file or folder.
Cancel Result: Returns None if the user closes the window or clicks “Cancel” without picking anything. Always check for this!
Multiple Files: If you set .allow_multiple = True on an OpenFileWindow, it returns a tuple of strings instead of just one!

Setting the Starting Location

You can control which folder the window shows first so your users don’t have to go searching through their entire computer.

The Quick Way (`set_initial_folder`)

Use .set_initial_folder(location) to pick a common starting spot.

'home': The user’s home directory.
'documents': The Documents folder.
'desktop': The Desktop.
'app': The folder where your Python script is currently running.

You can also pass extra folders to go deeper! For example, .set_initial_folder('documents', 'MyGames', 'Saves') will open right to your custom save folder.

The Specific Way (`initial_path`)

If you have a very specific exact path in mind, use the .initial_path property to set it manually (e.g., open_win.initial_path = 'C:/Images/').

Filtering File Types

For OpenFileWindow and SaveFileWindow, you can limit which files are visible so the user doesn’t accidentally try to “open” a music file in your text editor app!

.add_file_type(description, extension): Adds a filter to the window’s dropdown.
- Example: open_win.add_file_type('Images', '*.png *.jpg')
.remove_file_type(description, extension): Removes a previously added filter.

If you don’t add any file types, GooeyPie defaults to showing "All files (*.*)".

Quick Summary of Properties

Property	Works on…	What it does
`.initial_path`	All Dialogs	Gets or sets the exact folder path the window starts at.
`.allow_multiple`	`OpenFileWindow`	Set to `True` to let users select more than one file at once.