How can I see the contents of the folders in the interactive window with uigetdir?

Hi,

I want to use uigetdir in my program in order to select the folder that content all the data I need to analyze. I use it in a GUI, I want to get the name of the folder in order to display it after. I used to use uigetfile but I just managed to get the name of the data that are inside my folder so now I use uigetdir. The good point is that I got the name of my folder but in the interaction window I just see the folder and not their content.

Is there a command as uigetfile('*.txt') to choose to see all files with uigetdir ?

Thank you very much !

Answer 1

[TED MOSBY]

Hi Naville,

If all you really need is the folder path , you can pick any file and then discard the file name. For example, to see *.txt files inside every folder, then capture the folder path:

[fileName, folderPath] = uigetfile('*.txt', 'Select any .txt file in your data folder');
if isequal(fileName, 0)
    return
end

disp(['You chose folder: ', folderPath]);

If you want a “browse‐folders but still see the files inside” experience, you can drop down to Java. The following snippet launches a standard Swing file chooser where you can see both files and folders, but you can still tell it to return a folder path if you want:

% Create a JFileChooser that starts in the current working directory:
jFC = javaObjectEDT('javax.swing.JFileChooser', pwd);

% Lets you select either files or directories:
jFC.setFileSelectionMode(javax.swing.JFileChooser.FILES_AND_DIRECTORIES);

% Optional: only allow folder selection if you want:
% jFC.setFileSelectionMode(javax.swing.JFileChooser.DIRECTORIES_ONLY);

% Show the dialog:
status = jFC.showOpenDialog([]);

if status == jFC.APPROVE_OPTION
    % Grab the full path (could be a file or a folder, depending on what you clicked)
    selected = char(jFC.getSelectedFile.getAbsolutePath);

    % If you only want a folder, check if it's a directory:
    if isfolder(selected)
        folderPath = selected;
    else
        % If you clicked a file, strip off the filename to get its parent folder
        folderPath = fileparts(selected);
    end

    disp(['Chosen folder: ', folderPath]);
else
    return
end

Hope this helps!