Replace Browser's Native File Input UI with a Styled Label / Button

Question

I'm trying to put a spin on this article to provide a nicer-looking user interface for a file upload input. In short, it's primarily a CSS-only method for hiding the browser's native input button and replacing it with a style label. The project I want to use it in also happens to be an Ionic3 project, and so I'd like the label that to be styled to look like a natural ion-button.

The code from the article works great if the label contains a plain text, but if I try and embed a button-element within the label, I get no love, regardless of whether I use the ion-button attribute incidentally.

  .inputfile {
    width: 0.1px;
    height: 0.1px;
    opacity: 0;
    overflow: hidden;
    position: absolute;
    z-index: -1;
  }

  .inputfile + label {
    display: inline-block;
  }

  .inputfile + label {
    cursor: pointer; /* "hand" cursor */
  }

<input type="file" name="file" id="file" class="inputfile" />
<label for="file">Choose a file text label</label> &lt;-- this works
<br/><br/>
<input type="file" name="file" id="file" class="inputfile" />
<label for="file">
  <button>Choose a file button label</button>
</label> &lt;-- this doesn't work

SO suggested my title was not great, if you have a suggestion for a better one feel free to change it. — vicatcu
– vicatcu, Commented Jan 2, 2019 at 21:48
I use to hide the input completely and create a styled button, then with javascript(jQuery) onclick on the button I trigger a click on the input... — Vickel
– Vickel, Commented Jan 2, 2019 at 22:00

Joe Nolan · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-03 13:00:22Z

1

This isn't a pure CSS solution or specific to Ionic, but in general for a button to stand in as the UI for a hidden file input element, the following appears to work. You can put a click handler on the button, and then in that handler, call the input element's DOM click handler:

<button (click)="handleClick($event)">Choose a file</button>

// Grab the element (Ionic/Angular)
    @ViewChild('fileInput') fileInput;
handleClick($event) {
  this.fileInput._native.nativeElement.click();
}

answered Jan 3, 2019 at 13:00

Joe Nolan

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Comments

Sheedo · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-03 07:45:40Z

You are probably better off styling the text label to look like a button.

  .inputfile {
    width: 0.1px;
    height: 0.1px;
    opacity: 0;
    overflow: hidden;
    position: absolute;
    z-index: -1;
  }

  .inputfile + label {
    display: inline-block;
  }

  .inputfile + label {
    cursor: pointer; /* "hand" cursor */
  }
  .button {
    -webkit-appearance: button;
    -webkit-writing-mode: horizontal-tb !important;
    text-rendering: auto;
    color: initial;
    letter-spacing: normal;
    word-spacing: normal;
    text-transform: none;
    text-indent: 0px;
    text-shadow: none;
    display: inline-block;
    text-align: start;
    margin: 0em;
    font: 400 11px system-ui;
    align-items: flex-start;
    text-align: center;
    cursor: default;
    color: buttontext;
    background-color: buttonface;
    box-sizing: border-box;
    padding: 2px 6px 3px;
    border-width: 2px;
    border-style: outset;
    border-color: buttonface;
    border-image: initial;
    border-color: rgb(216, 216, 216) rgb(209, 209, 209) rgb(186, 186, 186);
    border-style: solid;
    border-width: 1px;
    padding: 1px 7px 2px;
  }

<input type="file" name="file" id="file" class="inputfile" />
<label for="file" class="button">Choose a file text label</label> &lt;-- this works
<br/><br/>
<input type="file" name="file" id="file" class="inputfile" />
<label for="file">
  <button>Choose a file button label</button>
</label> &lt;-- this doesn't work

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