You can see a solved solution with a working demo here that allows you to preview and submit form files to the server. For your case, you need to use Ajax to facilitate the file upload to the server:
<from action="" id="formContent" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<span>File</span>
<input type="file" id="file" name="file" size="10"/>
<input id="uploadbutton" type="button" value="Upload"/>
</form>
The data being submitted is a formdata. On your jQuery, use a form submit function instead of a button click to submit the form file as shown below.
$(document).ready(function () {
$("#formContent").submit(function(e){
e.preventDefault();
var formdata = new FormData(this);
$.ajax({
url: "ajax_upload_image.php",
type: "POST",
data: formdata,
mimeTypes:"multipart/form-data",
contentType: false,
cache: false,
processData: false,
success: function(){
alert("successfully submitted");
});
});
});