al_show_native_file_dialog(3alleg5)

💅 al_show_native_file_dialog 💅

okay bestie, welcome to the Allegro 5 reference manual, section 3alleg5 — today's main character is al_show_native_file_dialog, and she is literally the girl who pops up the file picker for you. let's get into it 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

al_show_native_file_dialog — the Allegro 5 API function that serves the file dialog 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <allegro5/allegro_native_dialog.h>

bool al_show_native_file_dialog(ALLEGRO_DISPLAY *display,
   ALLEGRO_FILECHOOSER *dialog)

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so the whole vibe here: this function shows the dialog window. periodt.

about that display argument — she's allowed to be NULL (no cap, it's fine), but if you do pass one, that display gets treated as the parent whenever that's possible. lowkey respectful of the hierarchy tbh 👑

now the important part, and I need you to hear me on this: this function blocks the calling thread until it returns. like, it is not letting go. so if you don't wanna be stuck waiting around, you might wanna spawn a thread with al_create_thread(3alleg5) and call her from inside that thread instead. main character energy requires delegation 💅

returns true on success, false on failure. that's it, that's the return value 🫶

Note: on Android, ALLEGRO_EVENT_DISPLAY_HALT_DRAWING(3alleg5) and ALLEGRO_EVENT_DISPLAY_RESUME_DRAWING(3alleg5) need to be handled before this function returns. which means — and I cannot stress this enough — you must call it from a different thread. no exceptions, bestie 😭

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and that's the whole page!! written up in the Allegro reference manual, mwah 💖 go forth and pick some files, you absolute icon ✨🎀🦋