ie javascript form submit with file input

I was having the same problem, and I solved it by using a styled <label> tag with a slight workaround in Firefox.

http://jsfiddle.net/djibouti33/uP7A9/

The Goals:

1. allow user to upload a file by using standard html file input control
2. hide standard html file input control and apply own styling
3. after user selects file to upload, automatically submit the form

The Browsers:

• Firefox, Chrome, IE8/9, Safari
• IE7 didn't work, but it might if you add it to the workaround detailed below.

The Initial Solution:

1. Hide the file input by positioning it offscreen. Important not to display:none as some browsers won't like this.
2. Add another styled element to the page (link, button).
3. Listen for a click on that element, then programmatically send a click to the file input to trigger the native 'file explorer'
4. Listen for the file input's onchange event (occurs after a user chooses their file)
5. Submit the form

The Problem:

1. IE: if you programmatically send a click to a file input in order to activate it (2), programmatically submitting the form (5) will throw a security error

The Workaround Solution:

1. Same as above
2. Take advantage of the accessibility features built in to the label tag (clicking on a label will activate it's associated control) by styling a label tag instead of a link/button
3. Listen for the file input's onchange event
4. Submit the form
5. For some reason Mozilla browsers won't activate a file input by clicking on it's label.
6. For Mozilla, listen for the click on the label and send a click event to the file input to activate it.

Hope this helps! Check out the jsfiddle for details on the html/js/css used to make it all work.

If you're like me, and you don't want to use an iframe, and you weren't too keen on the label solution mentioned above, you can just position the original button above the styled button with an opacity of 0.

Using the example above, you would still have:

<input type="file" class="hidden" name="hidden" id="hidden" />
<input type="button" name="shown" id="shown" value="Add File" />

But .hidden would be defined like so:

.hidden {
  position: absolute;
  left: -150px;
  opacity: 0;
  filter: alpha(opacity=0);
}

Config: Set the opacity to 0.5 (or =50) to see the transparent element and tweak the left positioning.

Arguably just as hacky as the answers above, but a bootstrap-friendly solution, and in my case, the only one that worked.

I found a weird solution to solve this problem.

It thought about the js click thread. If it goes out of this thread, there no more security issues.

I chose to use window.setTimeout. see sample below:

<script type="text/javascript">

    $(function () {
        $("#<%= this.fuDoc.ClientID %>").bind('change', uploadFile);
        $("#<%= this.btnUpload.ClientID %>").click(chooseFile);
    });

    function chooseFile() {
        $("#<%= this.fuDoc.ClientID %>").click();
    }

    function uploadFile() {
        var fu = $("#<%= this.fuDoc.ClientID %>");
        if (fu.val() != "") {
            window.setTimeout(function () { 
                <%= this.ClientScript.GetPostBackEventReference(this.btnUpload, "") %>; 
            }, 100);
        }
    }

</script>

<asp:FileUpload ID="fuDoc" runat="server" style="display: none;" />

<asp:Button runat="server" ID="btnUpload" Text="upload" OnClick="btnUpload_Click" />

<asp:Label ID="lbltext" Text="" runat="server" />`

then, no more acces denied!

This is an old post but the problem still arises. This may not be working because jQuery kindly fails silently. I was having this problem and wondering why my hidden form would not submit and the file get uploaded. I started off by using jQuery, but then I went vanilla. It still didn't work but looked as though an exception was being thrown in my .click() function.

Running

try {
    document.getElementById('formid').submit();
} catch (e) {
    alert(e);
}

showed that we indeed were throwing an error, and quick research showed that this was because IE DOES NOT SUPPORT SIMULATED CLICKS ON A FILE INPUT. This means that when the form went to be posted, IE would refuse to post the form

Excuse the bold caps, but I know many people will see text and not read it

Have you tried

  $('button').click(function(){
        $('form[name=thisForm]').submit()
    });

You need to change onsumbit='return false;' to onsubmit='return validateForm()'.

Then have validateForm() return true if the form passes your validation checks, or false if it does not.

The onsubmit='return false' is preventing the form from submitting via document.thisForm.submit(); as well as when the user clicks the submit button.

I commented these lines in j query.form.js then every thing works fine for me. Don't ask me the reason even i don't have the solution for that but it works for sure.

        if (io.contentWindow.document.execCommand) {
          try { // #214
               io.contentWindow.document.execCommand('Stop');
         } catch(ignore) {}
      }