User interface in Angular File manager component
4 Apr 20233 minutes to read
The file manager UI is comprised of several sections like view, toolbar, breadcrumb, context menu, and so on. The UI of the file manager is enhanced with injectable modules like Details View for browsing files and folders in a grid, Navigation Pane for folder navigation, and Toolbar for file operations. The file manager with all feature modules have the following sections in its UI.
- View (Large Icons view for browsing files and folders),
- Toolbar (For direct access to file operations),
- Navigation Pane (For easy navigation between folders),
- Breadcrumb (For parent folder navigations),
- Context Menu (For accessing file operations).
The basic file manager is a light weight component with all the basic functions. The basic file manager have the following sections in its UI to browse files and folders and manage them with file operations.
- View (Large Icons view for browsing files and folders),
- Breadcrumb (For parent folder navigations),
- Context Menu (For accessing file operations).
Toolbar
The toolbar is an injectable module in file manager. It should be injected before rendering the file manager to avail its functionality. It is present at the top of the file manager. Toolbar provides easy access to the file operations using different buttons.
If the toolbar items exceed the size of the toolbar, then the exceeding toolbar size will be moved to toolbar popup with a dropdown button at the end of toolbar.
Refer Toolbar section in file operations to know more about the buttons present in toolbar.
Files and folders navigation
The file manager provides navigation between files and folders using the following two options.
Navigation pane
The navigation pane is an injectable module so, it should be injected before rendering the file manager to use its functionality.
It displays the folder hierarchy of the file system and provides easy navigation to the desired folder. Using navigationPaneSettings minimum and maximum width of the navigation pane can be changed.
The navigation pane can be shown or hidden using the visible option in the navigationPaneSettings.
BreadCrumb
The file manager provides breadcrumb for navigating to the parent folders. The breadcrumb in the file manager is responsible for resizing.
Whenever the path length exceeds the breadcrumb length, a dropdown button will be added at the starting of the breadcrumb to hold the parent folders adjacent to root.
View
View is the section where the files and folders are displayed for the user to browse. The file manager has two types of views to display the files and folders.
The large icons view is the default starting view in the file manager. The view can be changed by using the toolbar view button or by using the view menu in context menu. The view API can also be used to change the initial view of the file manager.
Large icons view
In the large icons view, the thumbnail icons will be shown in a larger size, which displays the data in a form that best suits their content. For image and video type files, a preview will be displayed. Extension thumbnails will be displayed for other type files.
Details view
Details view is an injectable module in the file manager so, it should be injected before rendering the file manager to avail its functionality. In the details view, the files are displayed in a sorted list order. This file list comprises of several columns of information about the files such as Name, Date Modified, Type, and Size. Each file has its own small icon representing the file type. Additional columns can be added using detailsViewSettings API. The details view allows you to perform sorting using column header.
Context menu
The context menu appears on user interaction such as right-click. The file manager is provided with context menu support to perform list of file operations with the files and folders. Context menu appears with varying menu items based on the targets such as file, folder (including navigation pane folders), and layout (empty area in view).
Context menu can be customized using the contextMenuSettings, menuOpen, and menuClick events.
Refer Context Menu section in file operations to know more about the menu items present in context menu.
