Question

Is there any chance to detect every file selection the user made for an HTML input of type file element?

This was asked many times before, but the usually proposed onchange event doesn’t fire if the user select the same file again.

Answer 1

Set the value of the input to null on each onclick event. This will reset the input‘s value and trigger the onchange event even if the same path is selected.

var input = document.getElementsByTagName('input')[0];

input.onclick = function () {
  this.value = null;
};
  
input.onchange = function () {
  console.log(this.value);
};

<input type="file" value="C:\fakepath">

Note: It’s normal if your file is prefixed with ‘C:\fakepath’. That’s a security feature preventing JavaScript from knowing the file’s absolute path. The browser still knows it internally.