javascriptreactjselectronnavigatorclipboarddata

When I "copy" a file where do I retrieve the file name and path?

I'm currently working on a react/electron app and I want to be able to copy a file that's outside the app (could be any file type) using ctrl+c or right click copy.

How can I retrieve that file's name and path inside my app? I've tried navigator.clipboard.readText() and .read() and haven't had any luck.

Solution

  • Unfortunately in Electron, clipboard is still highly platform-dependant requiring different code depending on which platform you're running. Here's a snippet for a single file to get you started. If you need access to multiple files, see this snippet.

    const { clipboard } = require('electron')

let text = null
if(process.platform === 'darwin') {        // MacOS
  text = clipboard.read('public.file-url')
} else {                                   // Windows
  text = clipboard.readBuffer('FileNameW').toString('ucs2')
}                                          // TODO: Linux
console.log(text);

    Depending on your presentation, you may need to convert to a human readable format (e.g. file:/// vs. C:\, etc)