The Code

A few things came up after I submitted the first post.

Say you have code similar to: <input type="text" name="username" id="username" value="Nick" disabled="disabled" />

Then, the user submits the form and you go to access ‘username’ via $username = $_POST['username']

Well, you might be surprised to find out that disabled="disabled" actually disables the value of the variable $_POST['username'].

Instead, if you want to keep the value of the text input, you should use the following code: <input type="text" name="username" id="username" value="Nick" readonly="readonly" />

Now, when you go to access $_POST['username'], you should still have the value of the input.

Graphical Differences

Happy Coding!

Nick

Good afternoon!

I figured I would start posting some minor tutorials on how to do some of the less common things with [X]HTML.

As the title denotes, today’s tutorial is on disabling* access to a text box. The code is simple enough, and can be found below:

disabled="disabled"

And, using it within the context of a form:

<input type="textbox" name="name_of_choice" id="id_of_choice" disabled="disabled" />

And, there you have it. Your text box is disabled, and the user will not be able to change the value of the text box within the browser.

*For added security, do server-side form validation to make sure the value has not changed. Or, if you really want information to be unchanged, do not put the information within a text box, but rather print it to the screen.

Nick