Method to get/set file pointers in clipboard

[darsain]

There is currently no mechanism to get/set file pointers from/to clipboard.

File pointers: The stuff in clipboard when you copy (ctrl+c) selected files in your OS file explorer.

After ~15 min research, there was #2244 issue which went a different direction and than got closed. Also there are some projects on hold waiting for this kind of functionality, such as bortexz/quercus#1.

[bompi88]

EDIT: Not ideal, but on mac I think I've used something like:

var filePath = clipboard.read('public.file-url').replace('file://', '');

to retrieve the path of the copied file.

On windows:

var rawFilePath = clipboard.read('FileNameW');
var filePath = rawFilePath.replace(new RegExp(String.fromCharCode(0), 'g'), '');

[oe]

@bompi88 this works well! But I guess nobody know this, and can only get only one file's path if multi files are copied. There should be an API like clipboard.readPaths() return an array of copied files' path.

An additional API like clipboard.readFileMetas() return an array of copied files' meta info {lastModified, lastModifiedDate, name, path, size, type} would be better. @zcbenz

[timkendrick]

@evecalm From inspecting the clipboard with Apple's clipboard viewer sample app, it looks like you should be able to get the path of multiple files via clipboard.read('NSFilenamesPboardType') (in plist format).

This doesn't help with setting the clipboard though, seeing as Electron only allows you to copy plain text to the clipboard (not e.g. NSFilenamesPboardType data).

It'd be great if there were some way to set non-plaintext clipboard data.

[timkendrick]

Actually, after further investigation, it looks like copying files to the clipboard programmatically is also totally possible (on macOS at least) using the experimental clipboard.writeBuffer() API:

clipboard.writeBuffer(
  'NSFilenamesPboardType',
  Buffer.from(`
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
    <plist version="1.0">
      <array>
        <string>/path/to/file1.ext</string>
        <string>/path/to/file2.ext</string>
      </array>
    </plist>
  `)
)

[oe]

@timkendrick Awesome!

But I guess we need a much more developer-friendly api 😟

[timkendrick]

@evecalm you can use the plist npm package to simplify working with plist-formatted strings:

const plist = require('plist');

function hasClipboardFiles() {
  return electron.remote.clipboard.has('NSFilenamesPboardType');
}

function getClipboardFiles() {
  if (!hasClipboardFiles()) { return []; }
  return plist.parse(electron.remote.clipboard.read('NSFilenamesPboardType'));
}

function setClipboardFiles(filePaths) {
  electron.remote.clipboard.writeBuffer('NSFilenamesPboardType', Buffer.from(plist.build(filePaths)));
}

[bpasero]

@bompi88 I tried to write on Windows to FileNameW but I could not get it to work, even if the contents match exactly what I get when I do the same from the Windows explorer. Reading seems fine, but has someone managed to write to the clipboard on Windows in a way that you can paste to the Windows explorer?

[bpasero]

It looks like when writing to NSFilenamesPboardType on macOS, the renderer crashes/freezes when pasting into an input field right after.

[dengyaolong]

how to get file paths in windows?