tkFileDialogs

[brandon harris]

I'm wanting to allow users to select hidden directories in windows and it seems that using the tkFileDialog.askdirectory() won't allow for that.  It's using the tkFileDialog.Directory class which calls an internal command 'tk_chooseDirectory' .  However the file selector dialogs (askopenfilename, asksaveasfilename, etc) has the common windows dialog which supports showing hidden folders.  It's using the tkFileDialog.Open class which is calling an internal command of 'tk_getOpenFile'.

Can anyone shed light on why these two dialogs are so very different and possibly give me a solution to this hidden directory issue.  I have found that you can't really use the Open class because it's going to require a file be selected, not a directory and the Directory class won't navigate to or have an initialdir that is hidden (on windows the %APPDAT% folder is hidden by default)

Windows Example Code.

import tkFileDialog
# Won't start in or allow navigation to APPDATA
test = tkFileDialog.askdirectory(initialdir='%APPDATA%')
# Will start in and navigate to APPDATA
test = tkFileDialog.askopenfile(initialdir='%APPDATA%')

Thanks in advance for any help given!


Brandon L. Harris