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Document picker

react-native-document-picker is a React Native wrapper for:

  • Apple's UIDocumentPickerViewController
  • Android's Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT
  • Windows Windows.Storage.Pickers

Package status​

Currently, the maintainer is focusing on the sponsor-only version of the library - see available improvements and roadmap. The public version will receive security / critical bug fixes from the maintainer but major new feature development is not planned at the moment. I expect some improvements from the sponsor-only version to make their way into the public package as well.

API​

pickSingle(options) / pick(options)​

Use pickSingle or pick to open a document picker for the user to select file(s).

  • with pick, you can use allowMultiSelection param to control whether user can select multiple files (false by default). Returns a Promise<Array<DocumentPickerResponse>>

  • pickSingle is "sugar function" on top of pick and only allows a single selection returns Promise<DocumentPickerResponse>

pickDirectory()​

Open a system directory picker. Returns a promise that resolves to ({ uri: string }) of the directory selected by user.

Options​

All the options are optional

allowMultiSelection:boolean​

Whether selecting multiple files is allowed. For pick, this is false by default. allowMultiSelection is false for pickSingle and cannot be overridden.

type:string|Array<string>​

The type or types of documents to allow selection of. An array of strings or single string.

  • On Android, these are MIME types such as text/plain or partial MIME types such as image/*. See common MIME types.
  • On iOS, these must be Apple Uniform Type Identifiers
  • If type is omitted it will be treated as */* or public.item.

[iOS and Android only] copyTo:"cachesDirectory" | "documentDirectory"​

If specified, the picked file is copied to NSCachesDirectory / NSDocumentDirectory (iOS) or getCacheDir / getFilesDir (Android). The uri of the copy will be available in result's fileCopyUri. If copying the file fails (e.g. due to lack of free space), fileCopyUri will be null, and more details about the error will be available in copyError field in the result.

This should help if you need to work with the file(s) later on, because by default, the picked documents are temporary files. They remain available only until your application terminates. This may impact performance for large files, so keep this in mind if you expect users to pick particularly large files and your app does not need immediate read access.

On Android, this can be used to obtain local, on-device copy of the file (e.g. if user picks a document from Google Drive, this will download it locally to the phone).

[iOS only] presentationStyle:'fullScreen' | 'pageSheet' | 'formSheet' | 'overFullScreen'​

Controls how the picker is presented, e.g. on an iPad you may want to present it fullscreen. Defaults to pageSheet.

[iOS only] transitionStyle:'coverVertical' | 'flipHorizontal' | 'crossDissolve' | 'partialCurl'​

Configure the transition style of the picker. Defaults to coverVertical, when the picker is presented, its view slides up from the bottom of the screen.

[iOS only] mode:"import" | "open"​

Defaults to import. If mode is set to import the document picker imports the file from outside to inside the sandbox, otherwise if mode is set to open the document picker opens the file in-place.

[Windows only] readContent:boolean​

Defaults to false. If readContent is set to true the content of the picked file/files will be read and supplied in the result object.

  • Be aware that this can introduce a huge performance hit in case of big files. (The files are read completely and into the memory and encoded to base64 afterwards to add them to the result object)

  • However, reading the file directly from within the Thread which managed the picker can be necessary on Windows: Windows Apps can only read the Downloads folder and their own app folder by default and If a file is outside of these locations it cannot be acessed directly. However if the user picks the file through a file picker permissions to that file are granted implicitly.

    In addition to the default locations, an app can access additional files and folders by declaring capabilities in the app manifest (see App capability declarations), or by calling a file picker to let the user pick files and folders for the app to access (see Open files and folders with a picker).

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/files/file-access-permissions

    Unfortunately that permission is not granted to the whole app, but only the Thread which handled the filepicker. Therefore, it can be useful to read the file directly.

  • You can use react-native-fs on Android and IOS to read the picked file.

Result​

The pick Promise resolves to an array of objects with the following keys.

uri​

The URI representing the document picked by the user. On iOS this will be a file:// URI for a temporary file in your app's container if mode is not specified or set at import otherwise it will be the original file:// URI. On Android this will be a content:// URI for a document provided by a DocumentProvider that must be accessed with a ContentResolver.

fileCopyUri​

If copyTo option is specified, this will point to a local copy of picked file. Otherwise, this is null.

type​

The MIME type of the file. On Android some DocumentProviders may not provide MIME types for their documents. On iOS this MIME type is based on the best MIME type for the file extension according to Apple's internal "Uniform Type Identifiers" database.

name​

The display name of the file. This is normally the filename of the file, but Android does not guarantee that this will be a filename from all DocumentProviders.

size​

The file size of the document. On Android some DocumentProviders may not provide this information for a document.

[Windows only] content​

The base64 encoded content of the picked file if the option readContent was set to true.

types.*​

DocumentPicker.types.* provides a few common types for use as type values, these types will use the correct format for each platform (MIME types on Android, UTIs on iOS).

If you need to provide your own file type filtering:

For Android, see common MIME types.

For iOS Uniform Type Identifiers.

Also, searching Google usually helps.

  • DocumentPicker.types.allFiles: All document types, on Android this is */*, on iOS is public.item
  • DocumentPicker.types.images: All image types
  • DocumentPicker.types.plainText: Plain text files
  • DocumentPicker.types.audio: All audio types
  • DocumentPicker.types.pdf: PDF documents
  • DocumentPicker.types.zip: Zip files
  • DocumentPicker.types.csv: Csv files
  • DocumentPicker.types.doc: doc files
  • DocumentPicker.types.docx: docx files
  • DocumentPicker.types.ppt: ppt files
  • DocumentPicker.types.pptx: pptx files
  • DocumentPicker.types.xls: xls files
  • DocumentPicker.types.xlsx: xlsx files

isCancel(err)​

If the user cancels the document picker without choosing a file (by pressing the system back button on Android or the Cancel button on iOS), the Promise will be rejected with a cancellation error. You can check for this error using DocumentPicker.isCancel(err) allowing you to ignore it and cleanup any parts of your interface that may not be needed anymore.

isInProgress(err)​

If the user somehow manages to open multiple file pickers (e.g. due the app being unresponsive), then only the picked result from the last opened picker will be considered and the promises from previous opened pickers will be rejected with an error that you can check using DocumentPicker.isInProgress().

This behavior might change in future to allow opening only a single picker at a time. The internal logic is currently implemented only on iOS.

[iOS only] releaseSecureAccess(uris: Array<string>)​

If mode is set to open, iOS is giving you secure access to a file located outside from your sandbox. In that case Apple is asking you to release the access as soon as you finish using the resource.

Example​

See the example app in example folder.

How to upload picked files?​

Use blob support that is built into react native - see comment. If you need to track upload progress, use XMLHttpRequest see here

Alternatively, use https://github.com/johanneslumpe/react-native-fs