Example of File Picker in React Native
Here is an Example of File Picker in React Native. For picking a file or a document we will use a library called react-native-document-picker. Which provides DocumentPicker component which is very helpful to pick any type of document from your mobile memory.
How to Use
react-native-document-picker library provides a DocumentPicker component in which you can set the file type you want to pick and accordingly it will provide you the option to choose the file.
Here is the code snippet of DocumentPicker we have used in this Example
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 | DocumentPicker.show({ filetype: [DocumentPickerUtil.allFiles()], //All type of Files DocumentPickerUtil.allFiles() //Only PDF DocumentPickerUtil.pdf() //Audio DocumentPickerUtil.audio() //Plain Text DocumentPickerUtil.plainText() }, (error, res) => { console.log('res : ' + JSON.stringify(res)); console.log('URI : ' + res.uri); console.log('Type : ' + res.type); console.log('File Name : ' + res.fileName); console.log('File Size : ' + res.fileSize); } ); |
In this example below, we will open a File Picker on a click of a button and will show the selected File URI, File Type, File name and File Size on the Text component. So Let’s get started with the Example.
To Make a React Native App
Getting started with React Native will help you to know more about the way you can make a React Native project. We are going to use react-native init to make our React Native App. Assuming that you have node installed, you can use npm to install thereact-native-cli command line utility.
Open the terminal and go to the workspace and runnpm install -g react-native-clireact-native init ProjectNameInstallation of Dependency
To use DocumentPicker we need to install react-native-document-picker package. To install this
Open the terminal and jump into your project
1 | cd ProjectName |
Run the following command
1 | npm install react-native-document-picker --save |
This command will copy all the dependencies into your node_module directory, You can find the directory in node_module the directory named react-native-document-picker.
Linking of Library
To use react-native-document-picker library we have to link some dependencies in Android and IOS project files. In order to link the library you have to run following command:
1 | react-native link |
Permission to access External Storage for Android
We are going to access external storage so we need to add some permission to the AndroidManifest.xml file.
So we are going to add the following permissions in the AndroidManifest.xml
1 | <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"/> |
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
| READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE | To Read the content of the SD card |
On devices before SDK version 23, the permissions are automatically granted if they appear in the manifest but after SDK version 23 we have to ask run time permission also, so we will ask for permission in code also. For more about the permission, you can see this post.
You can download the source code from Github
OR
Open App.js in any code editor and the Replace the code with the following code
App.js
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 | /*This is an example of File Picker in React Native*/ import React from 'react'; import { StyleSheet, Text, View, Button, TouchableOpacity, Image, } from 'react-native'; import { DocumentPicker, DocumentPickerUtil, } from 'react-native-document-picker'; export default class App extends React.Component { constructor(props) { super(props); this.state = { fileUri: '', fileType: '', fileName: '', fileSize: '', }; } handleChange() { //Opening Document Picker DocumentPicker.show( { filetype: [DocumentPickerUtil.allFiles()], //All type of Files DocumentPickerUtil.allFiles() //Only PDF DocumentPickerUtil.pdf() //Audio DocumentPickerUtil.audio() //Plain Text DocumentPickerUtil.plainText() }, (error, res) => { this.setState({ fileUri: res.uri }); this.setState({ fileType: res.type }); this.setState({ fileName: res.fileName }); this.setState({ fileSize: res.fileSize }); console.log('res : ' + JSON.stringify(res)); console.log('URI : ' + res.uri); console.log('Type : ' + res.type); console.log('File Name : ' + res.fileName); console.log('File Size : ' + res.fileSize); } ); } render() { return ( <View style={styles.container}> <TouchableOpacity activeOpacity={0.5} style={{ alignItems: 'center' }} onPress={this.handleChange.bind(this)}> <Image source={{ uri: 'https://aboutreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/clips.png', }} style={styles.ImageIconStyle} /> <Text style={{ marginTop: 10 }}>Add Attachment</Text> </TouchableOpacity> <Text style={styles.text}> {this.state.fileUri ? 'URI\n' + this.state.fileUri : ''} </Text> <Text style={styles.text}> {this.state.fileType ? 'Type\n' + this.state.fileType : ''} </Text> <Text style={styles.text}> {this.state.fileName ? 'File Name\n' + this.state.fileName : ''} </Text> <Text style={styles.text}> {this.state.fileSize ? 'File Size\n' + this.state.fileSize : ''} </Text> </View> ); } } const styles = StyleSheet.create({ container: { flex: 1, backgroundColor: '#fff', alignItems: 'center', justifyContent: 'center', padding: 16, backgroundColor: 'white', }, text: { backgroundColor: '#fff', alignItems: 'center', justifyContent: 'center', fontSize: 15, textAlign: 'center', marginTop: 16, color: 'black', }, ImageIconStyle: { height: 80, width: 80, resizeMode: 'stretch', }, }); |
To Run the React Native App
Open the terminal again and jump into your project using.cd ProjectNamereact-native run-androidreact-native run-ios (macOS only).Android
IOS
As this file picker provides the iCloud pick also so before running the Application for IOS. Open the project in Xcode and click on the project in the left sidebar and you will see many options in the workspace.
1. In the general tab, you have to choose your signing profile from XCode.
2. In the Capabilities tab, You can see the iCloud option which you have to turn on.
3. It will ask you to choose the development team. Select your development team.
This is how you can Pick a file from the React Native Application. If you have any doubt or you want to share something about the topic you can comment below or contact us here. There will be more posts coming soon. Stay tuned!
Hope you liked it. 🙂
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How to prevent the package from accessing icloud as I do not have Apple Developer Account and would just want to access from the local storage.
I have tried but you have to have an ICloud Account for that.
* What went wrong:
A problem occurred evaluating project ‘:react-native-document-picker’.
> Could not find method google() for arguments [] on repository container.