title: Open file upload dialog on click of an icon
body: <p>I want to be able to open the file upload dialog when the user clicks on an icon without showing a file input element. </p>
  
  <p>I have the following code with the icons and the file input elements:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;div class="col-md-5 col-sm-5"&gt;
      &lt;div class="tools"&gt;
          &lt;ul class="publishing-tools list-inline"&gt;
              &lt;!--&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;&lt;i class="ion-compose"&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;--&gt;
              &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;&lt;i class="ion-images"&gt;
                  &lt;input type="file" name="image" accept="image/gif,image/jpeg,image/jpg,image/png" multiple="" data-original-title="upload photos"&gt;
              &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
              &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;&lt;i class="ion-ios-videocam"&gt;
                  &lt;input type="file" name="video" accept="video/mp4,video/x-m4v" multiple="" data-original-title="upload video" &gt;
              &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
              &lt;!-- &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;&lt;i class="ion-map"&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;--&gt;
          &lt;/ul&gt;
          &lt;button class="btn btn-primary pull-right" name="btn_publish"&gt;Publish&lt;/button&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>That code displays like this:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/YCvVr.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/YCvVr.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>How can I hide the file input element and activate the file dialog corresponding to each icon when the icon is clicked?</p>