How to "Reveal in Finder" or "Show in Explorer" with Qt

Question

Is it possible to open a folder in Windows Explorer/OS X Finder and then select/highlight one file in that folder, and do it in a cross platform way? Right now, I do something like

QDesktopServices::openUrl( QUrl::fromLocalFile( path ) );

where path is a full path to folder I want to open. Obviously, this will just open the folder, and I'll have to track down the file I need manually. This is a bit of a problem when there are thousands of files in that folder.

If I make it a path to specific file in that folder, then that file is open with default application for that mime type, and that is not what I need. Instead, I need the functionality equivalent to "Reveal in Finder" or "Show in Explorer".

Answer 1

Probably you can use QFileDialog::getOpenFileName to get the file name. The documentation is available here.. The above function will return the complete path including the file name and its extension if any..

Then you can give

QDesktopServices::openUrl(path);

to open the the file in its default appication, where the path will be the QString returned by QFileDialog::getOpenFileName.

Hope it helps..

Answer 2

Qt Creator has this functionality, it's trivial to copy it:

void FolderNavigationWidget::showInGraphicalShell(QWidget *parent, const QString &pathIn)
{
    // Mac, Windows support folder or file.
#if defined(Q_OS_WIN)
    const QString explorer = Environment::systemEnvironment().searchInPath(QLatin1String("explorer.exe"));
    if (explorer.isEmpty()) {
        QMessageBox::warning(parent,
                             tr("Launching Windows Explorer failed"),
                             tr("Could not find explorer.exe in path to launch Windows Explorer."));
        return;
    }
    QString param;
    if (!QFileInfo(pathIn).isDir())
        param = QLatin1String("/select,");
    param += QDir::toNativeSeparators(pathIn);
    QProcess::startDetached(explorer, QStringList(param));
#elif defined(Q_OS_MAC)
    Q_UNUSED(parent)
    QStringList scriptArgs;
    scriptArgs << QLatin1String("-e")
               << QString::fromLatin1("tell application \"Finder\" to reveal POSIX file \"%1\"")
                                     .arg(pathIn);
    QProcess::execute(QLatin1String("/usr/bin/osascript"), scriptArgs);
    scriptArgs.clear();
    scriptArgs << QLatin1String("-e")
               << QLatin1String("tell application \"Finder\" to activate");
    QProcess::execute("/usr/bin/osascript", scriptArgs);
#else
    // we cannot select a file here, because no file browser really supports it...
    const QFileInfo fileInfo(pathIn);
    const QString folder = fileInfo.absoluteFilePath();
    const QString app = Utils::UnixUtils::fileBrowser(Core::ICore::instance()->settings());
    QProcess browserProc;
    const QString browserArgs = Utils::UnixUtils::substituteFileBrowserParameters(app, folder);
    if (debug)
        qDebug() <<  browserArgs;
    bool success = browserProc.startDetached(browserArgs);
    const QString error = QString::fromLocal8Bit(browserProc.readAllStandardError());
    success = success && error.isEmpty();
    if (!success)
        showGraphicalShellError(parent, app, error);
#endif
}

Another, related blog post (with simpler code, I haven't tried it so I can't comment), is this.