How to show local picture in web page?

I need to show a picture on web page without uploading it. something like

 <img id="RuPic" src="file://localhost/D:/folder/image.jpg"/>

How to do that?


You can do that easily using FileReader.readAsDataURL(). The user chooses an image and you can display it without needing to upload it.

For more info see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileReader/readAsDataURL

Here is the code:

function previewFile() {
    // Where you will display your image
    var preview = document.querySelector('img');
    // The button where the user chooses the local image to display
    var file = document.querySelector('input[type=file]').files[0];
    // FileReader instance
    var reader  = new FileReader();

    // When the image is loaded we will set it as source of
    // our img tag
    reader.onloadend = function () {
      preview.src = reader.result;
    }

    
    if (file) {
      // Load image as a base64 encoded URI
      reader.readAsDataURL(file);
    } else {
      preview.src = "";
    }
  }
  <input type="file" onchange="previewFile()"><br>
  <img src="" height="200" alt="Image preview...">

Linking to local image files from remote HTML files used to be possible, but no longer is.

  • In Firefox since version 1.5 (background and config options here)

  • In Internet Explorer I think since Version 8 (I believe I have successfully done this in IE 7, but I can't find hard data)

  • In Chrome probably since forever

See for example this vulnerability report for why this is a good thing.

I don't think there is a workaround. You will just have to upload the image first.