Clearing an HTML file upload field via JavaScript

You can't set the input value in most browsers, but what you can do is create a new element, copy the attributes from the old element, and swap the two.

Given a form like:

<form> 
    <input id="fileInput" name="fileInput" type="file" /> 
</form>

The straight DOM way:

function clearFileInput(id) 
{ 
    var oldInput = document.getElementById(id); 

    var newInput = document.createElement("input"); 

    newInput.type = "file"; 
    newInput.id = oldInput.id; 
    newInput.name = oldInput.name; 
    newInput.className = oldInput.className; 
    newInput.style.cssText = oldInput.style.cssText; 
    // TODO: copy any other relevant attributes 

    oldInput.parentNode.replaceChild(newInput, oldInput); 
}

clearFileInput("fileInput");

Simple DOM way. This may not work in older browsers that don't like file inputs:

oldInput.parentNode.replaceChild(oldInput.cloneNode(), oldInput);

The jQuery way:

$("#fileInput").replaceWith($("#fileInput").val('').clone(true));

// .val('') required for FF compatibility as per @nmit026

Resetting the whole form via jQuery: https://stackoverflow.com/a/13351234/1091947

Simply now in 2014 the input element having an id supports the function val('').

For the input -

<input type="file" multiple="true" id="File1" name="choose-file" />

This js clears the input element -

$("#File1").val('');