Why can't radio buttons be "readonly"?

html radio-button readonly
mcv picture mcv · Dec 23, 2009 · Viewed 260.7k times · Source

I would like to show a radio button, have its value submitted, but depending on the circumstances, have it not editable. Disabled doesn't work, because it doesn't submit the value (or does it?), and it grays out the radio button. Read-only is really what I'm looking for, but for some mysterious reason it doesn't work.

Is there some weird trick I need to pull to get read-only to work as expected? Should I just do it in JavaScript instead?

Incidentally, does anyone know why read-only doesn't work in radio buttons, while it does work in other input tags? Is this one of those incomprehensible omissions in the HTML specs?

Answer

Sampson picture Sampson · Dec 23, 2009

Radio buttons would only need to be read-only if there are other options. If you don't have any other options, a checked radio button cannot be unchecked. If you have other options, you can prevent the user from changing the value merely by disabling the other options:

<input type="radio" name="foo" value="Y" checked>
<input type="radio" name="foo" value="N" disabled>

Fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/qqVGu/

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