File handling examples?

[sacha-renault]

Hey, are there any examples for file operations in plugins? I'm trying to add file loading to my plugin but can't find any examples. I am using egui.

Specifically looking for:

• Drag & drop files into the plugin GUI
• File picker dialogs that don't crash the plugin

I tried using rfd but it crashes my plugin in most DAWs (which I could expect since it blocks the gui thread until the file is picked). BaseView drag & drop doesn't seem to work on Windows.
Would be super helpful to have an example showing the proper way to do this!

[Lubba-64]

Also interested in this functionality, and keyboard input.

[Lubba-64]

I decided to do some digging, I'm going to try to make an implementation with the async task executor. not sure if you already tried that, but it should keep the GUI thread unblocked. its a really weird interface, the Plugin trait has the impl for the task, and then you call a method to initiate the task (async_executor.execute_background).

I'll get around to testing this at somepoint but that's my best guess as to what would fix it.

[sacha-renault]

@Lubba-64
Thanks for the answer, that's what i figured out too. I also found an alternative, that works at least with vizia:

|cx| {
    cx.spawn(move |proxy: &mut ContextProxy| {
        let path_opt = rfd::FileDialog::new()
            .add_filter("audio", &["wav"])
            .pick_file();
        if let Some(path) = path_opt {
            // We send a message > load audio
            let _ = proxy.emit(AppEvent::FileLoading(path));
        }
    });
}

The Dropdown thing is what i am looking at now, but i feel like it's a baseview limitation. But drop file is implemented in baseview. I have to dig deeper to understand.

[Lubba-64]

https://github.com/Lubba-64/node_sound has a working implementation with egui. It's implemented using background tasks.

you need to use context in the audio thread, define a task_executor function in the plugin, and supply a BackgroundTask type.