How to disable an input type=text?

I want to disable writing in an input field of type text using JavaScript, if possible. The input field is populated from a database; that is why I don't want the user to modify its value.

document.getElementById('foo').disabled = true;

or

document.getElementById('foo').readOnly = true;

Note that readOnly should be in camelCase to work correctly in Firefox (magic).

Demo: https://jsfiddle.net/L96svw3c/ -- somewhat explains the difference between disabled and readOnly.

If you know this when the page is rendered, which it sounds like you do because the database has a value, it's better to disable it when rendered instead of JavaScript. To do that, just add the readonly attribute (or disabled, if you want to remove it from the form submission as well) to the <input>, like this:

<input type="text" disabled="disabled" />
//or...
<input type="text" readonly="readonly" />

If the data is populated from the database, you might consider not using an <input> tag to display it. Nevertheless, you can disable it right in the tag:

<input type='text' value='${magic.database.value}' disabled>

If you need to disable it with Javascript later, you can set the "disabled" attribute:

document.getElementById('theInput').disabled = true;

The reason I suggest not showing the value as an <input> is that, in my experience, it causes layout issues. If the text is long, then in an <input> the user will need to try and scroll the text, which is not something normal people would guess to do. If you just drop it into a <span> or something, you have more styling flexibility.

Get a reference to your input box however you like (eg document.getElementById('mytextbox')) and set its readonly property to true:

myInputBox.readonly = true;

Alternatively you can simply add this property inline (no JavaScript needed):

<input type="text" value="from db" readonly="readonly" />

You can also by jquery:

$('#foo')[0].disabled = true;

Working example:

$('#foo')[0].disabled = true;

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<input id="foo" placeholder="placeholder" value="value" />

You can get the DOM element and set disabled attribute to true/false.

If you use vue framework,here is a very easy demo.

  let vm = new Vue({
        el: "#app",
        data() {
            return { flag: true }
        },
        computed: {
            btnText() {
                return this.flag ? "Enable" : "Disable";
            }
        }
    })

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/vue/2.5.17/vue.js"></script>

<div id="app">
    <input type="text" value="something" :disabled="flag" />
    <input type="button" :value="btnText" @click="flag=!flag">
</div>

// CSS Markup
        .disabled-input {
                     pointer-events: none;
                    }
// HTML
    <input class="disabled-input" />

If you are looking for a purely CSS approach you can disabled it by giving the following property to the class.