Silverlight does not have direct access to the local file system for security reasons. However, you can still prompt the user to select a specific file to open using the OpenFileDialog similarly to how you do in .NET. Here's some basic code that demonstrates opening a user specified file using Silverlight 2 Beta 1.
This basic example opens up a user specified file, and displays its contents within a textbox.
Page.xaml file
<UserControl x:Class="SilverlightFileSystemInfo.Page"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Width="480">
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
<Grid HorizontalAlignment="Left">
<TextBox x:Name="txtFile" Width="400" Height="250" AcceptsReturn="True" />
</Grid>
<Grid HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Top">
<Button x:Name="btnSelectFile" Content="Add File" Width="75" Height="30" Click="btnSelectFile_Click"></Button>
</Grid>
</Grid>
</UserControl>
Page.xaml.cs file
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.IO;
namespace SilverlightOpenFileTest
{
public partial class Page : UserControl
{
public Page()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
private void btnSelectFile_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
OpenFileDialog fileDialog = new OpenFileDialog();
// Show the Open File Dialog
DialogResult result = fileDialog.ShowDialog();
// Open the file if OK was clicked in the dialog
if (result == DialogResult.OK)
{
FileDialogFileInfo fi = fileDialog.SelectedFile;
Stream s = fi.OpenRead();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(s);
txtFile.Text = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
}
}
}
Now isn't that simple? I wonder if they'll ever add the SaveFileDialog...