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Pandya
Asked: 2014-06-27 00:49:34 +0800 CST

How do I prompt users with a GUI dialog box to choose file/directory path, via the command-line?

  • 772

Suppose I have a script like this:

(The example depicts an rysnc use case)

#!/bin/bash
echo -n "Enter Source Directory:"
read srcdir
echo -n "Enter Destination Directory:"
read dstdir
rsync -av --delete "$srcdir" "$dstdir"

The idea here is to prompt the user to enter the "Source" and "Destination" directories for rsync to work with. As is, the user will have to manually enter /path/to/directory/ via the command-line.

Instead, I want to prompt the user to enter the paths through a GUI interface.

Something like this: screem

What commands can I use to prompt the user with a GUI selection window that returns the file path to the command-line?

command-line

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can use this for files:

    zenity --file-selection

    and this for folders:

    zenity --file-selection --directory

    for usage, run:

    zenity --help-general
zenity --help-file-selection

    Generally it matches the current theme (for GTK window managers anyway), on my machine with a modded version of Zukitwo 3.8 it looks like this:

    One way of using it is like this:

    echo "you selected $(zenity --file-selection)"

    Which would result in you selected /path/to/file.

    You can also use options to set an appropriate title, and the directory it starts in - With your rsync use case, for example:

    zenity --file-selection --directory --title="Choose rsync source directory" --filename=$HOME/Desktop/

    For files, you can also specify a filetype to select - e.g:

    zenity --file-selection --file-filter='PDF files (pdf) | *.pdf' --title="Select a PDF file"

    NOTE: You can also use YAD, a fork of Zenity that has loads more features. 

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/y-ppa-manager
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install yad

    Source

    For the most part you can use it the same way - for the file browser:

    yad --file-selection

    and for the help page:

    yad --help-all

    Though at the time (around version 26?), it had not been updated to match the new GTK 3.14+ interface (zenity had) - it has more features, but check compatibility (based on documentation it should work on GTK+ >= 2.16.0

    • 39

  2. Just for the record, you can use dialog for a Text-based User Interface (TUI) solution.

    Syntax:

    dialog --title "text" --fselect /path/to/dir height width

    Example:

    FILE=$(dialog --stdout --title "Please choose a file" --fselect $HOME/ 14 48)
echo "${FILE} file chosen."

    The output will be something like this:

    Example

    As pointed out by @Wilf, you can use the $LINES and $COLUMNS variables to make it fill the terminal:

    $(dialog --stdout --title "Please choose a file" --fselect $HOME/ $(expr $LINES - 15) $(expr $COLUMNS - 10))
    • 21

  3. I know this is 8 months old and also that the OP's question has been answered. However, yad has been mentioned but no example has been offered. Here's my solution using yad.

    DIR="/home" \
i=0;for location in source destination
do
((i++));selection[$i]=$(yad --center \
--width 350 \
--form \
--title="yad example" \
--text="Select $location directory" \
--field=:LBL "" \
--field=Path:DIR "$DIR" \
--separator='' )
done;\
echo "Command to run is \"rsync -av --delete ${selection[1]} ${selection[2]}\""

    The way it works is like this. We put yad in a for loop, setting the variable $location to source for the first pass and destination for the second. The output is placed in the array selection[] for which the variable i is used as the index. This is set to 0 at the start and incremented with each pass. Hence the source is saved as ${selection[1]} and the destination ${selection[2]}.

    The DIR="/home" on the first line sets the dialog default. The yad command options can be found from the terminal by typing yad --help.

    yad screenshot

    • 6

  4. Here is the shortest (and best) solution to the answer: Yad provides the exact option just like zenity does:

    yad --file-selection --directory

    This opens a directory selection dialog. Without the additional argument --directory it will be a file selection dialog instead.

    • 3