Prevent form field to be edited without disabling field

Question

I am currently working on a page that has a date picker for one of the field.

One of the requirements by my client is to prevent the user from editing the field manually. Only the date picker would be possible to be used. (jQuery DatePicker)

I had in mind to disable the field and use an hidden field to store the data (disabled from object ton send data on post). This sounds a bit wacky for something that could be done by javascript I'm pretty sure.

So the big question, in javascript is it possible to prevent manual edition of a field without stopping datepicker plugin?

Answer 1

Instead of disabling the field, just add the readonly attribute. It will have a similar effect as disabling the field, but without the need to store the value to a hidden field.

Answer 2

You can also access this property with javascript if needed:

document.getElementById("myTextBoxID").readOnly = true;