Loading an image to a <img> from <input file>

I'm trying to load an image selected by the user through an element.

I added a onchange event handler to the input element like this:

<input type="file" name="picField" id="picField" size="24" onchange="preview_2(this);" alt=""/>

and the preview_2 function is:

var outImage ="imagenFondo";
function preview_2(what){
    globalPic = new Image();
    globalPic.onload = function() {
        document.getElementById(outImage).src = globalPic.src;
    }
    globalPic.src=what.value;
}

where outImage has the id value of the tag where I want the new picture to be loaded.

However, it appears that the onload never happens and it does not load anything to the html.

What should I do?

Solution 1:

In browsers supporting the File API, you can use the FileReader constructor to read files once they have been selected by the user.

Example

document.getElementById('picField').onchange = function (evt) {
    var tgt = evt.target || window.event.srcElement,
        files = tgt.files;

    // FileReader support
    if (FileReader && files && files.length) {
        var fr = new FileReader();
        fr.onload = function () {
            document.getElementById(outImage).src = fr.result;
        }
        fr.readAsDataURL(files[0]);
    }

    // Not supported
    else {
        // fallback -- perhaps submit the input to an iframe and temporarily store
        // them on the server until the user's session ends.
    }
}

Browser support

IE 10
Safari 6.0.2
Chrome 7
Firefox 3.6
Opera 12.02

Where the File API is unsupported, you cannot (in most security conscious browsers) get the full path of a file from a file input box, nor can you access the data. The only viable solution would be to submit the form to a hidden iframe and have the file pre-uploaded to the server. Then, when that request completes you could set the src of the image to the location of the uploaded file.

Solution 2:

As iEamin said in his answer, HTML 5 does now support this. The link he gave, http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/dndfiles/ , is excellent. Here is a minimal sample based on the samples at that site, but see that site for more thorough examples.

Add an onchange event listener to your HTML:

<input type="file" onchange="onFileSelected(event)">

Make an image tag with an id (I'm specifying height=200 to make sure the image isn't too huge onscreen):

<img id="myimage" height="200">

Here is the JavaScript of the onchange event listener. It takes the File object that was passed as event.target.files[0], constructs a FileReader to read its contents, and sets up a new event listener to assign the resulting data: URL to the img tag:

function onFileSelected(event) {
  var selectedFile = event.target.files[0];
  var reader = new FileReader();

  var imgtag = document.getElementById("myimage");
  imgtag.title = selectedFile.name;

  reader.onload = function(event) {
    imgtag.src = event.target.result;
  };

  reader.readAsDataURL(selectedFile);
}

Solution 3:

$('document').ready(function () {
    $("#imgload").change(function () {
        if (this.files && this.files[0]) {
            var reader = new FileReader();
            reader.onload = function (e) {
                $('#imgshow').attr('src', e.target.result);
            }
            reader.readAsDataURL(this.files[0]);
        }
    });
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<input type="file" id="imgload" >
<img src="#" id="imgshow" align="left">

That works for me in jQuery.