Event on a disabled input

Question

Apparently a disabled is not handled by any event

Is there a way to work around this issue ?

Answer 1

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).

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

$(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>

Answer 4

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

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

and the input (+ script) should be

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

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

Answer 5

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!

Answer 6

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.