Disabled form inputs do not appear in the request

Question

I have some disabled inputs in a form and I want to send them to a server, but Chrome excludes them from the request.

Is there any workaround for this without adding a hidden field?

<form action="/Media/Add">
    <input type="hidden" name="Id" value="123" />

    <!-- this does not appear in request -->
    <input type="textbox" name="Percentage" value="100" disabled="disabled" /> 

</form>

Answer 1

To post values from disabled inputs in addition to enabled inputs, you can simply re-enable all of the form's inputs as it is being submitted.

<form onsubmit="this.querySelectorAll('input').forEach(i => i.disabled = false)">
    <!-- Re-enable all input elements on submit so they are all posted, 
         even if currently disabled. -->

    <!-- form content with input elements -->
</form>

If you prefer jQuery:

<form onsubmit="$(this).find('input').prop('disabled', false)">
    <!-- Re-enable all input elements on submit so they are all posted, 
         even if currently disabled. -->

    <!-- form content with input elements -->
</form>

For ASP.NET MVC C# Razor, you add the submit handler like this:

using (Html.BeginForm("ActionName", "ControllerName", FormMethod.Post,
    // Re-enable all input elements on submit so they are all posted, even if currently disabled.
    new { onsubmit = "this.querySelectorAll('input').forEach(i => i.disabled = false)" } ))
{
    <!-- form content with input elements -->
}

Answer 2

Semantically this feels like the correct behaviour

I'd be asking myself "Why do I need to submit this value?"

If you have a disabled input on a form, then presumably you do not want the user changing the value directly

Any value that is displayed in a disabled input should either be

1. output from a value on the server that produced the form, or
2. if the form is dynamic, be calculable from the other inputs on the form

Assuming that the server processing the form is the same as the server serving it, all the information to reproduce the values of the disabled inputs should be available at processing

In fact, to preserve data integrity - even if the value of the disabled input was sent to the processing server, you should really be validating it. This validation would require the same level of information as you would need to reproduce the values anyway!

I'd almost argue that read-only inputs shouldn't be sent in the request either

Happy to be corrected, but all the use cases I can think of where read-only/disabled inputs need to be submitted are really just styling issues in disguise

Answer 3

If you absolutely have to have the field disabled and pass the data you could use a javascript to input the same data into a hidden field (or just set the hidden field too). This would allow you to have it disabled but still post the data even though you'd be posting to another page.

Answer 4

Elements with Disabled attribute are not submitted or you can say their values are not posted (see the second bullet point under Step 3 in the spec for building the form data set).

I.e.,

<input type="textbox" name="Percentage" value="100" disabled="disabled" /> 

FYI,

1. Disabled controls do not receive focus.
2. Disabled controls are skipped in tabbing navigation.
3. Disabled controls cannot be successfully posted.

You can use readonly attribute in your case, by doing this you will be able to post your field's data.

I.e.,

<input type="textbox" name="Percentage" value="100" readonly="readonly" />

FYI,

1. Read-only elements receive focus but cannot be modified by the user.
2. Read-only elements are included in tabbing navigation.
3. Read-only elements are successfully posted.

Answer 5

I'm updating this answer since is very useful. Just add readonly to the input.

So the form will be:

<form action="/Media/Add">
    <input type="hidden" name="Id" value="123" />
    <input type="textbox" name="Percentage" value="100" readonly/>
</form>

Answer 6

You can totally avoid disabling, it is painful since html form format won't send anything related to <p> or some other label.

So you can instead put regular

<input text tag just before you have `/>

add this readonly="readonly"

It wouldn't disable your text but wouldn't change by user so it work like <p> and will send value through form. Just remove border if you would like to make it more like <p> tag