Files and file systems have always been one of the most important concepts in computing because they provide a convenient mechanism for providing input to, and storing output from, computer software.
Despite this, browsers have been extremely limited in the manner they can interact with files or the file system. This interaction has been limited to the file input type, which can be declared as follows:
<input type="file" name="selectedFile"/>
This creates an input type that allows a file to be selected from the file system. For instance, in Chrome, the input field appears as you see in Figure 34.2, while in Firefox, the input type appears as you see in Figure 34.1.
Once a file is selected, its content will be submitted to the web server when the form is submitted: The file contents can then be accessed by the web server and processed.
Despite its simplicity, the file input type is extremely important to HTML, and many of the most popular sites on the Internet could not exist without it. Any time you select a file from ...
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