The type or namespace name 'Forms' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Windows' FIX

Question

Can someone please help me with this, am trying to use OpenFileDialog class from System.Windows.Forms to open a file dialog and read the selected file. Then, this error showed up. I've referenced it but still the same, below is the code.

`using UnityEngine using UnityEngine.UI using System.Windows.Forms;

public class OpenFileButtonScript: MonoBehaviour { public TextFieldScript textFieldScript;

public void OpenFile()
{
    OpenFileDialog openFileDialog = new OpenFileDialog();
    openFileDialog.Filter = "Text Files (*.txt)|*.txt|All Files (*.*)|*.*";
    openFileDialog.FilterIndex = 1;
    openFileDialog.Multiselect = false;

    if (openFileDialog.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
    {
        string filePath = openFileDialog.FileName;
        string text = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(filePath);
        textFieldScript.inputField.text = text;
    }
}

}`

Answer 1

It may look like you have access to all of the native Window system libraries, but it just looks like it. In actuality, a lot of the time you're simply given stubs, or shims, that look like the full Window libraries, because there's a certain element that Unity wants to use from those namespaces. If you think about it, the code you present above, what do you think it should do on Android or Nintendo devices? The simple answer is, it simply won't work.

Generally in cases like this, you have to gain access to the native operating system, and perform those calls directly. For example, there is a file browser asset on the Asset Store, that does this for you. It's not free, because the process isn't trivial.

Depending on how much effort you want to put in, you CAN read files from the local file stores (to varying degrees based on platform). It's possible to read the list of files in a location, and use either uGUI or UIToolkit to create your own File Open Dialogue box. Again, this isn't a trivial task either. So you have to be sure that you'd want to go down that path.