Is there any way of just getting the content of the browsed file without any upload/file transfer operations? I currently use ICEFaces inputFile component but I do not need the default uploading operation of the file. Thanks.
That's not possible. The client needs to send (upload) the file content along the request body to the server side whenever you want to have the file content at the server side.
If you'd expect that you can solve this by passing only the file path around and use the usual java.io.File stuff and so on, then you're on the wrong track. Imagine that I am the client and I have a c:/passwords.txt, how would you as being the server at the other end of the network ever get its content by java.io.File?