Understanding How Disabled and Readonly Attributes Affect HTML (input, select) Form Field Submissions

Welcome to this post! Let’s quickly dive into the main topic.

I recently encountered an issue while working with Laravel (PHP) forms. I had a scenario where I needed to submit an EDIT form with certain fields disabled and their values already pre-filled. However, upon form submission on the server side, I noticed that the values of these fields were missing.

I became curious about why these fields were behaving this way and decided to update the code. I used the ‘disabled’ attribute for these fields to prevent editing. While I had previously used the ‘readonly’ attribute, it didn’t provide the desired user interface as it didn’t visually convey that the field was non-editable.

As a result, I received a question: “If a form field has the ‘disabled’ attribute, will it not submit its value with the form?”

After conducting a quick search, I found the answer that not only resolved my issue but also refreshed my understanding of the basics related to this challenge.

Answer: Yes, that’s correct. When a form field has the ‘disabled’ attribute, its value will not be submitted with the form upon submission to the server. This is because web browsers consider disabled fields as non-editable and exclude them from form submissions. If you need to submit the value of a field while preventing users from editing it, using the ‘readonly’ attribute is a better option. Unlike the ‘disabled’ attribute, the ‘readonly’ attribute allows the field’s value to be submitted with the form while still preventing user edits.

I hope you found this succinct post informative and valuable for your learning journey.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and happy learning!

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