I tried Path > Stroke to Path but it just fills the whole rectangle instead of converting my dotted stroke into filled dots.

Is there any way in Inkscape to easily convert my dotted stroke to a fill?

If not is there an alternative application that does such which is free?

The SVG file's code is located here.
https://codeshare.io/aypQBe

Hi.

The dots are a result of the stroke having a dasharray -so it won't convert to a path as per se.
You can create a raster copy (Alt+B) and trace bitmap the result.

Or you can also try a development version compiled by Jabiertxof to test a dashed line path effect here. Once path effect added, convert it to a path and it is probably good to go.

I was hoping that wouldn't be the case.

In Affinity Designer, I can just go to Layer > Expand Stroke and it does the magic for me but I need a free solution.

So just so I understand, currently there's no way built-in. I would need to export it as an image (preferably 2 colors) and then convert the raster to a vector just to get the path's dashed border to be filled. Correct?

???? Works for me. They converted to path in Inkscape 0.91 and they still do in Inkscape 0.92.3.
If they don't, it's a bug.

Can you please share the SVG file?

(maybe there's a path effect applied to your object?... They can cause problems...)

Seems to work here... is this the desired result?

So the problem was relative towards how my SVG was coded. The border was a custom border rather than dotted or dashed which Inkscape didn't understand. With a little Inkscape tweaking, it worked by using Path > Stroke To Path