Show a different value from an input that what wil

Question

I'd like to know if there is a way to show in an input of type text a different value than the one send to PHP.

For example, let say you have :

<input type="text" value="John"> that display John.

Can I change the value to "Doe" for the user but keep it to "John" for php?

Can I achieve this using the difference between $.attr('value') and $.val()?

I ran a couple of tests and it seems that I will have to reverse it directly in my controller. Is there an other solution?

Here is a little jSFiddle to play around.

Answer 1

An odd request to be sure but...

You can't change the field's value and just do a simple form submission. The field will dutifully send whatever is in it. There's a few hackery ways around this tho

Option 1 - Hidden fields

So make a field, disable it, and add a hidden field. Disabled fields are never successful, although the user will be unable to change the field value and many browsers will change the styling of the field automatically

<input type="text" name="name" value="John" disabled>
<input type="hidden" name="name" value="Doe">

Option 2 - Change the value on submit

As you mentioned, you can always change the value when the form is submitted. The below listener will capture the form submitt Using jQuery since you asked it that way

$("form").on( "submit", function( event ) {
  event.preventDefault();
  $('input[name="name"]').val('Doe');
  $("form").submit();
});

Answer 2

If you're open to a (pure) PHP solution, sure you can.

Sidenote: It's best to have a serverside method (as a Plan-B), should the end-user disable Javascript.

Given the user will replace the "already shown" value in the input though.

The input needs to hold a name attribute in order for this method to work.

<?php 

if(!empty($_POST['name'])){

   echo $name = $_POST['name']; // Will echo what was replaced in the input

}

else{
 echo $name = $_POST['name']; // Will echo the value that was already set in the input
}

?>


<form method="post">

<input type="text" value="John" name="name">

<input type="submit">

</form>

Note: echo $var = "something"; is valid syntax.

---

Edit:

It's unclear as to what you want to achieve here. However you can use a hidden attribute and remove value="John" from the input.

The user will need to fill the input.

The following will only output "Doe" if the input was left blank, yet output both if it is filled.

<?php 

if(!empty($_POST['name'])){

   echo $name = $_POST['name'];

}

    else{
     echo $name = $_POST['name'];
    }


if(isset($_POST['hidden_name_value'])){

   echo $hidden = $_POST['hidden_name_value'];

}



?>


<form method="post">

<input type="text" name="name">

<input type="hidden" name="hidden_name_value" value="Doe">

<input type="submit">

</form>