change type of input field with jQuery

Question

$(document).ready(function() {
    // #login-box password field
    $('#password').attr('type', 'text');
    $('#password').val('Password');
});

This is supposed to change the #password input field (with id="password") that is of type password to a normal text field, and then fill in the text “Password”.

It doesn’t work, though. Why?

Here is the form:

<form enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" method="post" action="/auth/sign-in">
  <ol>
    <li>
      <div class="element">
        <input type="text" name="username" id="username" value="Prihlasovacie meno" class="input-text" />
      </div>
    </li>
    <li>
      <div class="element">
        <input type="password" name="password" id="password" value="" class="input-text" />
      </div>
    </li>
    <li class="button">
      <div class="button">
        <input type="submit" name="sign_in" id="sign_in" value="Prihlásiť" class="input-submit" />
      </div>
    </li>
  </ol>
</form>

Answer 1

Simply this:

this.type = 'password';

such as

$("#password").click(function(){
    this.type = 'password';
});

This is assuming that your input field was set to "text" before hand.

Answer 2

A more cross-browser solution… I hope the gist of this helps someone out there.

This solution tries to set the type attribute, and if it fails, it simply creates a new <input> element, preserving element attributes and event handlers.

changeTypeAttr.js (GitHub Gist):

/* x is the <input/> element
   type is the type you want to change it to.
   jQuery is required and assumed to be the "$" variable */
function changeType(x, type) {
    x = $(x);
    if(x.prop('type') == type)
        return x; //That was easy.
    try {
        return x.prop('type', type); //Stupid IE security will not allow this
    } catch(e) {
        //Try re-creating the element (yep... this sucks)
        //jQuery has no html() method for the element, so we have to put into a div first
        var html = $("<div>").append(x.clone()).html();
        var regex = /type=(\")?([^\"\s]+)(\")?/; //matches type=text or type="text"
        //If no match, we add the type attribute to the end; otherwise, we replace
        var tmp = $(html.match(regex) == null ?
            html.replace(">", ' type="' + type + '">') :
            html.replace(regex, 'type="' + type + '"') );
        //Copy data from old element
        tmp.data('type', x.data('type') );
        var events = x.data('events');
        var cb = function(events) {
            return function() {
                //Bind all prior events
                for(i in events)
                {
                    var y = events[i];
                    for(j in y)
                        tmp.bind(i, y[j].handler);
                }
            }
        }(events);
        x.replaceWith(tmp);
        setTimeout(cb, 10); //Wait a bit to call function
        return tmp;
    }
}

Answer 3

Even easier... there's no need for all the dynamic element creation. Just create two separate fields, making one the 'real' password field (type="password") and one a 'fake' password field (type="text"), setting the text in the fake field to a light gray color and setting the initial value to 'Password'. Then add a few lines of Javascript with jQuery as below:

    <script type="text/javascript">

        function pwdFocus() {
            $('#fakepassword').hide();
            $('#password').show();
            $('#password').focus();
        }

        function pwdBlur() {
            if ($('#password').attr('value') == '') {
                $('#password').hide();
                $('#fakepassword').show();
            }
        }
    </script>

    <input style="color: #ccc" type="text" name="fakepassword" id="fakepassword" value="Password" onfocus="pwdFocus()" />
    <input style="display: none" type="password" name="password" id="password" value="" onblur="pwdBlur()" />

So when the user enters the 'fake' password field it will be hidden, the real field will be shown, and the focus will move to the real field. They will never be able to enter text in the fake field.

When the user leaves the real password field the script will see if it's empty, and if so will hide the real field and show the fake one.

Be careful not to leave a space between the two input elements because IE will position one a little bit after the other (rendering the space) and the field will appear to move when the user enters/exits it.

Answer 4

$('#pass').focus(function() { 
$('#pass').replaceWith("<input id='password' size='70' type='password' value='' name='password'>");
$('#password').focus();
});

<input id='pass' size='70' type='text' value='password' name='password'>

Answer 5

Nowadays, you can just use

$("#password").prop("type", "text");

But of course, you should really just do this

<input type="password" placeholder="Password" />

in all but IE. There are placeholder shims out there to mimic that functionality in IE as well.

Answer 6

I haven't tested in IE (since I needed this for an iPad site) - a form I couldn't change the HTML but I could add JS:

document.getElementById('phonenumber').type = 'tel';

(Old school JS is ugly next to all the jQuery!)

But, http://bugs.jquery.com/ticket/1957 links to MSDN: "As of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5, the type property is read/write-once, but only when an input element is created with the createElement method and before it is added to the document." so maybe you could duplicate the element, change the type, add to DOM and remove the old one?