How to get the selected file name from an input type file using jQuery

Today we will show you how to get the selected file name from an input type file using jQuery. On a recent job, we were using a form where a user could add up to 3 images to upload to a contact form on CF7. We styled this to look as follows:-

So how do we get the filename on a selection of a file? The answer is jQuery’s change() method.

You can use the jQuery’s change() method to get the file name selected by the HTML form control <input type="file" />. Let’s check out an example to understand how it works:


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>jQuery Get Selected File Name</title>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.12.4.min.js"></script>
<script>
    $(document).ready(function(){
        $('input[type="file"]').change(function(e){
            var fileName = e.target.files[0].name;
            alert('The file "' + fileName +  '" has been selected.');
        });
    });
</script>
</head>
<body>
    <form>
        <input type="file">
        <p><strong>Note:</strong> Choose any file on your computer and its name will be displayed in an alert dialog box.</p>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

In our case scenario, we wanted to display the filename inside the file box, in which case we added the following to the HTML:-


    <div class="icon-add-file"></div>

So all we did was replace the alert with the following JS code:-


$('.filename').html(fileName);

// If you are using multiple file uploads, you will have to do some traversing, in our case we had to get the parent(x3) selector and find the .filename class:
$(this).parent().parent().parent().find('.filename').html(fileName);

Replacing the default file inputs

Okay, so you might have looked at the first screenshot and wondered how we replaced the default styling of the file input boxes. Don’t worry, we have you covered here as well.


.file-wrapper {
    padding: 10px 20px;
    border: solid 2px #F8F8F8;
    background: #F8F8F8;
    color: #818586;
    max-width: 100%;
    outline: none;
    height: 150px;
    width: 100%;
    display: block;    
}

div.wpcf7 input[type="file"] {
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    opacity: 0;
    overflow: hidden;
    position: absolute;
    z-index: 1;
    left: 0;
    top: 0;
}

.icon-add-file {
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    right: 0;
    top: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    display: flex;
    align-items: center;
    justify-content: center;    
    background-image: url(../img/icon-plus-symbol.png);
    display: block;
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: center;    
}

.file-wrapper .wpcf7-form-control-wrap {
    position: relative;
    width: 100%;
    display: block;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    height: 150px;
    margin-top: -23px;
}

So what we did here was that we hid the original styling of the file input using opacity 0, we then added a background image which covers the grey input box so anywhere can be clicked to bring up the file upload window. In our example, we were using CF7 so the code may need to be amended to your project.

Well, we sure hope this helps, if you have any questions let us know and we’ll get back to you!

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