How to prevent user from typing in text field without disabling the field?

but it removes the entered text slightly after a letter is entered. Is there anyway to prevent the user from entering text completely without resorting to disabling the text field?

12 Answers 12

A non-Javascript alternative that can be easily overlooked: can you use the readonly attribute instead of the disabled attribute? It prevents editing the text in the input, but browsers style the input differently (less likely to "grey it out") e.g.

The readonly attribute does not have a value, it just needs to be present in both HTML 4.01 and HTML5. The only time it needs a value is in valid XHTML documents (which are extremely rare on the web).

That's exactly correct RobG, I should have mentioned that. Also want to mention that this attribute should work for textarea elements, and I think it works for checkbox/radio inputs as well.

There is one downside to this method. The user can still click into the field, making it appear as if it's editable. If they hit backspace to remove what's in there, it may trigger the "back" functionality of the browser. Not a good experience.

If there are concerns about the user experience or if the default styling of a readonly field is just plain ugly, take the progressive enhancement approach and use CSS to make it more obvious that it's not editable: jsfiddle.net/eBh5N

@MikeMertsock nice one. this helped me where disabled suppressed the click event, but using readonly the click event still works.

if you don't want the field to look "disabled" or smth, just use this:

onkeydown="return false;" 

it's basically the same that greengit and Derek said but a little shorter

This is perfect when using a datepicker for example, to prevent the user from typing the date and actually use the datepicker. But as @gsanta said, they will still be able to paste text, so just make sure to have a back-end validation aswell :)

On an ASP.NET website, setting a text box to readonly causes the text to be lost on a post back. This is the better solution in such cases.

$('input').keydown(function(e) < e.preventDefault(); return false; >); 

actually, I have a date of birth field and I want to prevent this from user typing, so for me your answer is GOOD!! If I use "readonly" attribute then user will not able to click on input and DOB popup coming through Click on input.. :) CHEERS. and Thanks

@treecoder: Good example. But what if I want to include a conditional check before preventing input? For example, I want to prevent input of all characters from "a" through "z", both in lowercase and uppercase, and the "@" symbol. All other symbols and numbers should be allowed. How do I do that using specifically the jQuery function you wrote above?

$('input').keypress(function(e) < e.preventDefault(); >); 

If you want to prevent the user from adding anything, but provide them with the ability to erase characters:

Setting the maxlength attribute of an input to "0" makes it so that the user is unable to add content, but still erase content as they wish.

But If you want it to be truly constant and unchangeable:

Setting the onkeydown attribute to return false makes the input ignore user keypresses on it, thus preventing them from changing or affecting the value.

One other method that could be used depending on the need $('input').onfocus(function()); I think this is how you would write it. I am not proficient in jquery.

The best solution is to unfocus input once user clicks it so it makes it kinda readonly

 onFocus= e.target.blur()> 

While this code may answer the question, it would be better to explain how it solves the problem without introducing others and why to use it. Code-only answers are not useful in the long run.

See "Explaining entirely code-based answers". While this might be technically correct it doesn't explain why it solves the problem or should be the selected answer. We should educate in addition to help solve the problem.

function preventInput(evnt) < //Checked In IE9,Chrome,FireFox if (evnt.which != 9) evnt.preventDefault();>

I like to add one that also works with dynamic javascript DOM creation like D3 where it is impossible to add:

//.attr(function()) //INCORRECT CODE ! 

to prevent actions on a HTML input DOM element add readonly to class:

var d = document.getElementById("div1"); d.className += " readonly"; 

 .classed("readonly", function()< if(condition)else >) 

AND add to CSS or less:

.readonly

the nice thing about this solution is that you can dynamically turn it on and of in a function so it can be integrated in for example D3 at creation time (not possible with the single "readonly" attribute).

to remove the element from class:

document.getElementById("MyID").className = document.getElementById("MyID").className.replace(/\breadonly\b/,''); 

$( "div" ).removeClass( "readonly" ) 

or toggle the class:

$( "div" ).toggleClass( "readonly", addOrRemove ); 

Just to be complete, good luck =^)

just use onkeydown="return false" to the control tag like shown below, it will not accept values from user.

One option is to bind a handler to the input event.

The advantage of this approach is that we don't prevent keyboard behaviors that the user expects (e.g. tab, page up/down, etc.).

Another advantage is that it also handles the case when the input value is changed by pasting text through the context menu.

This approach works best if you only care about keeping the input empty. If you want to maintain a specific value, you'll have to track that somewhere else (in a data attribute?) since it will not be available when the input event is received.

const inputEl = document.querySelector('input'); inputEl.addEventListener('input', (event) => < event.target.value = ''; >);

Tested in Safari 10, Firefox 49, Chrome 54, IE 11.