Event on a disabled input

Apparently a disabled <input> is not handled by any event

Is there a way to work around this issue ?

<input type="text" disabled="disabled" name="test" value="test" />

$(':input').click(function () {
    $(this).removeAttr('disabled');
})

Here, I need to click on the input to enable it. But if I don't activate it, the input should not be posted.

Disabled elements don't fire mouse events. Most browsers will propagate an event originating from the disabled element up the DOM tree, so event handlers could be placed on container elements. However, Firefox doesn't exhibit this behaviour, it just does nothing at all when you click on a disabled element.

I can't think of a better solution but, for complete cross browser compatibility, you could place an element in front of the disabled input and catch the click on that element. Here's an example of what I mean:

<div style="display:inline-block; position:relative;">
  <input type="text" disabled />
  <div style="position:absolute; left:0; right:0; top:0; bottom:0;"></div>
</div>​

jq:

$("div > div").click(function (evt) {
    $(this).hide().prev("input[disabled]").prop("disabled", false).focus();
});​

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/RXqAm/170/ (updated to use jQuery 1.7 with prop instead of attr).

Disabled elements "eat" clicks in some browsers - they neither respond to them, nor allow them to be captured by event handlers anywhere on either the element or any of its containers.

IMHO the simplest, cleanest way to "fix" this (if you do in fact need to capture clicks on disabled elements like the OP does) is just to add the following CSS to your page:

input[disabled] {pointer-events:none}

This will make any clicks on a disabled input fall through to the parent element, where you can capture them normally. (If you have several disabled inputs, you might want to put each into an individual container of its own, if they aren't already laid out that way - an extra <span> or a <div>, say - just to make it easy to distinguish which disabled input was clicked).

The downside is that this trick unfortunately won't works for older browsers that don't support the pointer-events CSS property. (It should work from IE 11, FF v3.6, Chrome v4): caniuse.com/#search=pointer-events

If you need to support older browsers, you'll need to use one of the other answers!

Maybe you could make the field readonly and on submit disable all readonly fields

$(".myform").submit(function(e) {
  $("input[readonly]").prop("disabled", true);
});

and the input (+ script) should be

<input type="text" readonly="readonly" name="test" value="test" />

$('input[readonly]').click(function () {
  $(this).removeAttr('readonly');
});

A live example:

$(".myform").submit(function(e) {
  $("input[readonly]").prop("disabled", true);
  e.preventDefault();
});


$('.reset').click(function () {
  $("input[readonly]").prop("disabled", false);
})

$('input[readonly]').click(function () {
  $(this).removeAttr('readonly');
})

input[readonly] {
  color: gray;
  border-color: currentColor;
}

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<form class="myform">
  <input readonly="readonly" value="test" />
  <input readonly="readonly" value="test" />
  <input readonly="readonly" value="test" />
  <input readonly="readonly" value="test" />
  <input readonly="readonly" value="test" />
  <input readonly="readonly" value="test" />
  <input readonly="readonly" value="test" />
  <input readonly="readonly" value="test" />
  <input readonly="readonly" value="test" />
  
  <button>Submit</button>
  <button class="reset" type="button">Reset</button>
</form>

I would suggest an alternative - use CSS:

input.disabled {
    user-select : none;
    -moz-user-select : none;
    -webkit-user-select : none;
    color: gray;
    cursor: pointer;
}

instead of the disabled attribute. Then, you can add your own CSS attributes to simulate a disabled input, but with more control.

$(function() {

  $("input:disabled").closest("div").click(function() {
    $(this).find("input:disabled").attr("disabled", false).focus();
  });

});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

<div>
  <input type="text" disabled />
</div>

Instead of disabled, you could consider using readonly. With some extra CSS you can style the input so it looks like an disabled field.

There is actually another problem. The event change only triggers when the element looses focus, which is not logic considering an disabled field. Probably you are pushing data into this field from another call. To make this work you can use the event 'bind'.

$('form').bind('change', 'input', function () {
    console.log('Do your thing.');
});

OR do this with jQuery and CSS!

$('input.disabled').attr('ignore','true').css({
    'pointer-events':'none',
     'color': 'gray'
});

This way you make the element look disabled and no pointer events will fire, yet it allows propagation and if submitted you can use the attribute 'ignore' to ignore it.

We had today a problem like this, but we didn't wanted to change the HTML. So we used mouseenter event to achieve that

var doThingsOnClick = function() {
    // your click function here
};

$(document).on({
    'mouseenter': function () {
        $(this).removeAttr('disabled').bind('click', doThingsOnClick);
    },
    'mouseleave': function () {
        $(this).unbind('click', doThingsOnClick).attr('disabled', 'disabled');
    },
}, 'input.disabled');

I did something very similar the Andy E; except I used a surrounding tag. However, I needed the 'name' so I changed it to an tag without the 'href'.

There is no reason you can't simulate the disabled attribute using a combination of CSS and readonly:

Faux-Disabled: <input type="text" value="1" readonly="1" style="background-color:#F6F6F6;"><br>

Real-Disabled: <input type="text" disabled="true" value="1"></input>

Note: This will not have the regular behavior of disabled in the <form>, which prevents the server from seeing the field. This is just in case you want to disable a field that doesn't matter server-side.

I find another solution:

<input type="text" class="disabled" name="test" value="test" />

Class "disabled" immitate disabled element by opacity:

<style type="text/css">
    input.disabled {
        opacity: 0.5;
    }
</style>

And then cancel the event if element is disabled and remove class:

$(document).on('click','input.disabled',function(event) {
    event.preventDefault();
    $(this).removeClass('disabled');
});

suggestion here looks like a good candidate for this question as well

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1221778/performing-click-event-on-a-disabled-element-javascript-jquery

jQuery('input#submit').click(function(e) {
    if ( something ) {        
        return false;
    } 
});