Use File Manager to input a filepath to a function

Gradio
1

Hi, I would like to allow users to use the File Manager to select a generic file (e.g. a Word document), so that the filepath for that file is passed to a function as a string, instead of passing a tempfile object.

E.g. User selects a Word document, the filepath for that document is then passed to a function which loads and processes the text from the document before returning some output.

I’ve tried using gr.File(), but this only seems to pass the actual file as a tempfile. I think gr.Image(type=“filepath”) does what I want, but this only works for images, not other filetypes.

Any help would be really appreciated!

Example code:

demo = gr.Blocks()

with demo:
    gr.Markdown("Upload a document to extract questions and get suggested responses.")

    with gr.Row():
        file_input = gr.File()
        file_output = gr.Textbox(label="Questions")

    file_button = gr.Button("Extract Questions")
    question_box = gr.Textbox(label="Question")

    suggest_button = gr.Button("Suggest Answers")
    suggest_output = gr.Textbox(label="Suggested Answer")

    file_button.click(
        fn=lambda x : extract_questions(document=x), 
        inputs=file_input, 
        outputs=file_output
    )
    suggest_button.click(
        fn=suggest_answer, 
        inputs=question_box, 
        outputs=suggest_output)

demo.launch()