In JavaScript can I make a “click” event fire programmatically for a file input element?

Question

I\'d like to make a click event fire on an tag programmatically.

Just calling click() doesn\'t seem to do anything or at lea

Answer 1

There are ways to redirect events to the control but don't expect to be able to easily fire events to the fire control yourself as the browsers will try to block that for (good) security reasons.

If you only need the file dialog to show up when a user clicks something, let's say because you want better looking file upload buttons, then you might want to take a look at what Shaun Inman came up with.

I've been able to achieve keyboard triggering with creative shifting of focus in and out of the control between keydown, keypress & keyup events. YMMV.

My sincere advice is to leave this the alone, because this is a world of browser-incompatibility-pain. Minor browser updates may also block tricks without warning and you may have to keep reinventing hacks to keep it working.