How to manually trigger click event in ReactJS?

Question

You could use the ref prop to acquire a reference to the underlying HTMLInputElement object through a callback, store the reference as a class property, then use that reference to later trigger a click from your event handlers using the HTMLElement.click method.

In your render method:

<input ref={input => this.inputElement = input} ... />

In your event handler:

this.inputElement.click();

Full example:

class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div onClick={this.handleClick}>
        <input ref={input => this.inputElement = input} />
      </div>
    );
  }

  handleClick = (e) => {
    this.inputElement.click();
  }
}

Note the ES6 arrow function that provides the correct lexical scope for this in the callback. Also note, that the object you acquire this way is an object akin to what you would acquire using document.getElementById, i.e. the actual DOM-node.

Got the following to work May 2018 with ES6 React Docs as a reference: https://reactjs.org/docs/refs-and-the-dom.html

import React, { Component } from "react";
class AddImage extends Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.fileUpload = React.createRef();
    this.showFileUpload = this.showFileUpload.bind(this);
  }
  showFileUpload() {
    this.fileUpload.current.click();
  }
  render() {
    return (
      <div className="AddImage">
        <input
          type="file"
          id="my_file"
          style={{ display: "none" }}
          ref={this.fileUpload}
        />
        <input
          type="image"
          src="http://www.graphicssimplified.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/upload-cloud.png"
          width="30px"
          onClick={this.showFileUpload}
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}
export default AddImage;

Here is the Hooks solution

    import React, {useRef} from 'react';

    const MyComponent = () =>{

    const myRefname= useRef(null);

    const handleClick = () => {
        myRefname.current.focus();
     }

    return (
      <div onClick={handleClick}>
        <input ref={myRefname}/>
      </div>
     );
    }

You can use ref callback which will return the node. Call click() on that node to do a programmatic click.

Getting the div node

clickDiv(el) {
  el.click()
}

Setting a ref to the div node

<div 
  id="element1"
  className="content"
  ref={this.clickDiv}
  onClick={this.uploadLogoIcon}
>

Check the fiddle

https://jsfiddle.net/pranesh_ravi/5skk51ap/1/

Hope it helps!

In a functional component this principle also works, it's just a slightly different syntax and way of thinking.

const UploadsWindow = () => {
  // will hold a reference for our real input file
  let inputFile = '';

  // function to trigger our input file click
  const uploadClick = e => {
    e.preventDefault();
    inputFile.click();
    return false;
  };

  return (
    <>
      <input
        type="file"
        name="fileUpload"
        ref={input => {
          // assigns a reference so we can trigger it later
          inputFile = input;
        }}
        multiple
      />

      <a href="#" className="btn" onClick={uploadClick}>
        Add or Drag Attachments Here
      </a>
    </>
  )

}

Riffing on Aaron Hakala's answer with useRef inspired by this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/54316368/3893510

const myRef = useRef(null);

  const clickElement = (ref) => {
    ref.current.dispatchEvent(
      new MouseEvent('click', {
        view: window,
        bubbles: true,
        cancelable: true,
        buttons: 1,
      }),
    );
  };

And your JSX:

<button onClick={() => clickElement(myRef)}>Click<button/>
<input ref={myRef}>