C# OpenFileDialog Non-Modal possible

Question

Is it possible to create/have a non-modal .net OpenFileDialog I have a UI element in the main dialog which always need to be available for the user to press.

Answer 1

No, OpenFileDialog and SaveFileDialog are both derived from FileDialog, which is inherently modal, so (as far as I know) there's no way of creating a non-modal version of either of them.

Answer 2

You can create a thread and have the thread host the OpenFileDialog. Example code is lacking any kind of synchronization but it works.

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
    OFDThread ofdThread;

    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        ofdThread = new OFDThread();
        ofdThread.Show();
    }
}

public class OFDThread
{
    private Thread t;
    private DialogResult result;

    public OFDThread()
    {
        t = new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(ShowOFD));
        t.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
    }

    public DialogResult DialogResult { get { return this.result; } }

    public void Show()
    {
        t.Start(this);
    }

    private void ShowOFD(object o)
    {
        OpenFileDialog ofd = new OpenFileDialog();
        result = ofd.ShowDialog();
    }
}

With this code you could add something to fire an event in your UI thread (be careful with invoking!) to know when they're done. You can access the result of the dialog by

DialogResult a = ofdThread.DialogResult

from your UI thread.