How to open select file dialog via js?

JS only - no need for jquery

Simply create an input element and trigger the click.

var input = document.createElement('input');
input.type = 'file';
input.click();

This is the most basic, pop a select-a-file dialog, but its no use for anything without handling the selected file...

Handling the files

Adding an onchange event to the newly created input would allow us to do stuff once the user has selected the file.

var input = document.createElement('input');
input.type = 'file';

input.onchange = e => { 
   var file = e.target.files[0]; 
}

input.click();

At the moment we have the file variable storing various information :

file.name // the file's name including extension
file.size // the size in bytes
file.type // file type ex. 'application/pdf'

Great!

But, what if we need the content of the file?

In order to get to the actual content of the file, for various reasons. place an image, load into canvas, create a window with Base64 data url, etc. we would need to use the FileReader API

We would create an instance of the FileReader, and load our user selected file reference to it.

var input = document.createElement('input');
input.type = 'file';

input.onchange = e => { 

   // getting a hold of the file reference
   var file = e.target.files[0]; 

   // setting up the reader
   var reader = new FileReader();
   reader.readAsText(file,'UTF-8');

   // here we tell the reader what to do when it's done reading...
   reader.onload = readerEvent => {
      var content = readerEvent.target.result; // this is the content!
      console.log( content );
   }

}

input.click();

Trying pasting the above code into your devtool's console window, it should produce a select-a-file dialog, after selecting the file, the console should now print the contents of the file.

Example - "Stackoverflow's new background image!"

Let's try to create a file select dialog to change stackoverflows background image to something more spicy...

var input = document.createElement('input');
input.type = 'file';

input.onchange = e => { 

   // getting a hold of the file reference
   var file = e.target.files[0]; 

   // setting up the reader
   var reader = new FileReader();
   reader.readAsDataURL(file); // this is reading as data url

   // here we tell the reader what to do when it's done reading...
   reader.onload = readerEvent => {
      var content = readerEvent.target.result; // this is the content!
      document.querySelector('#content').style.backgroundImage = 'url('+ content +')';
   }

}

input.click();

open devtools, and paste the above code into console window, this should pop a select-a-file dialog, upon selecting an image, stackoverflows content box background should change to the image selected.

Cheers!

Using jQuery

I would create a button and an invisible input like so:

<button id="button">Open</button>
<input id="file-input" type="file" name="name" style="display: none;" />

and add some jQuery to trigger it:

$('#button').on('click', function() {
    $('#file-input').trigger('click');
});

Using Vanilla JS

Same idea, without jQuery (credits to @Pascale):

<button onclick="document.getElementById('file-input').click();">Open</button>
<input id="file-input" type="file" name="name" style="display: none;" />