I haven’t seen any examples on how to use the native OS browse dialogs for opening & saving files, so here’s a quick example.

Basically, the idea is to use the File (which extends FileReference) class, and pretend to upload or download files from the net, but not actually perform the action, and just grab the file’s path directly.

This app allows you to load a PNG or JPEG, apply a blur effect, then save it as a JPEG again. It requires the JPGEncoder from the AS3 corelib

Download BrowseExample.mxml (only works with Apollo, not in a browser etc)

Install BrowseExample.air

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:ApolloApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute"
	title="Browse Example"
	backgroundColor="0x222222">

	<mx:Script>
		<![CDATA[
			import mx.events.IndexChangedEvent;
			import mx.events.DragEvent;
			import mx.containers.Canvas;
			import mx.effects.effectClasses.BlurInstance;
			import flash.filesystem.*;
			import com.adobe.images.*;

			// File object for saving / loading
			private var file:File;

			// callback when slider is changed
			public function blurImg():void {
				// get the value from the slider
				var blurVal:Number = slider.value;

				// use the slider value to construct a blurring filter
				var filter:BlurFilter = new BlurFilter(blurVal, blurVal, 3);

				// apply the blur filter to the image
				img.filters = [filter];
			}

			public function saveImg():void {
				// start at desktop directory
				file = File.desktopDirectory; 

				// listen for when the user has selected a location to save
				file.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, onFileSave);

				// request a download a bogus file, to get the Browse dialog to pop up
				file.download(new URLRequest(”http://foo/foo”), “blurred.jpg”);
			}

			public function onFileSave(e:Event):void {

				// cancel the file download, since it was bogus anyway
				// now, ‘file’ now points at where they want to save
				file.cancel();

				// grab the pixel data from the image
				var bmpData:BitmapData = new BitmapData(img.width, img.height);
				bmpData.draw(img);

				// encode the pixel data into a JPEG
				var jpgEncoder:JPGEncoder = new JPGEncoder();
				var jpgBytes:ByteArray = jpgEncoder.encode(bmpData);

				// open a filestream from the file
				var stream:FileStream = new FileStream();
				stream.open(file, FileMode.WRITE);

				// write the jpeg data to the file
				stream.writeBytes(jpgBytes, 0, jpgBytes.length);

				// close the stream. the file is now saved.
				stream.close();				

			}

			public function loadImg():void {

				// start at the desktop directory
				file = File.desktopDirectory; 

				// listen for select event
				file.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, onFileLoad); 

				// open browse dialog to pick an image file
				file.browse([new FileFilter("Images", "*.jpg;*.png")]);
			}

			// handler for when user selects a file
			private function onFileLoad(e:Event):void {

				// ‘file’ now contains a url pointing at the file they selected.
				// in a flash movie, you would not have access to the full path,
				// but in apollo you do.
				trace(file.url);

				// load the image that they picked.
				// In Apollo, you can load from file://… URLs
				img.load(file.url);
			}

		]]>
	</mx:Script>
	<mx:VBox left=”5″ top=”5″ bottom=”5″ right=”5″ horizontalAlign=”center”>
		<mx:HBox width=”100%”  horizontalAlign=”center”>
			<mx:Button label=”Load…” click=”loadImg()”  />
			<mx:Button label=”Save as JPG…” click=”saveImg()”  />
		</mx:HBox>
		<mx:HSlider id=”slider” change=”blurImg()”  minimum=”1″ maximum=”25″ snapInterval=”0.2″ width=”90%”/>
		<mx:Image id=”img” />
	</mx:VBox>

</mx:ApolloApplication>