WPF alternative for WinForms FolderBrowserDialog

[Jogge]

I'm missing a proper WPF-way to select a folder with a dialog.

Best answers on the internet says I have to reference WinForms and use the FolderBrowserDialog. I don't want to make a reference to WinForms just to make a dialog to select a folder.

WPF already have SaveFileDialog and OpenFileDialog...

Related links:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1922204/open-directory-dialog
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4547320/using-folderbrowserdialog-in-wpf-application

[JohanLarsson]

There is https://www.nuget.org/packages/Ookii.Dialogs/ but agreed it would be nice with something built-in as the need comes up a lot.

[miloush]

Agree I am missing this often too. It is not even that difficult, since you just need to set PICKFOLDERS option on the already existing FileOpenDialog. There is FileDialog.SetOption method to manipulate the options, however, that is internal. Unfortunately it cannot be set by reflection either, since the options are filtered out when creating the dialog, not sure why.

Moreover, Visual Studio itself is using that dialog for File | Open | Folder...

[clairernovotny]

The WinForms dialog is a thin wrapper around the Win32 OS dialog. What would you expect differently in a WPF version?

Also, there's no harm in the WinForms reference as both WPF and WinForms are in the same shared desktop framework folder on-disk...i.e., it's there anyway.

[miloush]

The WinForms one is wrapper around an outdated, no longer recommended API. WPF uses the suggested IFileDialog instead for all the other dialogs and that is what I would expect it to use for this one too. As I said, it is the same dialog that you see when you do File > Open > Folder in Visual Studio.

[clairernovotny]

The WinForms dialog in .NET Core uses the newer API already, have you tried it?

[miloush]

In that case we agree on the implementation. WPF already has its own implementation of the API, why would you outsource one of the dialogs, break the inheritance chain and introduce a dependency on another assembly? (assuming the surfaced API is compatible with the one WPF already using)

[glyad]

The WinForms dialog in .NET Core uses the newer API already, have you tried it?
Anyway, why to bring sticking dependencies into newly developing framework? It looks like as Microsoft is looking for a reason to prevent porting of WPF to other platforms forever.

[glyad]

The WinForms dialog in .NET Core uses the newer API already, have you tried it?

We are not talking here about what's new in WinForms. We are talking about, what is missing in WPF.
What's worth with to have a customisable WPF control with Control Template, etc.? Probably it's off-topic, but same question I would be asked about MessageBox. Why not to add MessageBoxWindow with corresponding Control Template and PART's defined?
Anyway, IMHO, no framework should rely on dependencies from another non parent framework. The WinForms framework isn't a parent of WPF and even not a sibling.

[johmarjac]

Wow, I am actually shocked that something so essential is still missing.

It's one year and a half from the time that this issue was created and FolderBrowserDialog still haven't been implemented. I'm trying to use as updated technologies as possible in my applications and I think that WinForms are actually already deprecated and not used in modern coding anymore. Please correct me if I'm wrong. What's the issue of they still haven't implemented this to the WPF?