How to Trigger a Click Event on Disabled Elements

jQuery click event on disabled input field

You can't fire any mouse event like click on a disabled HTML element. Alternative of this, is to wrap up the element in a span or div and perform the click event on those.

$("div").click(function (evt) {
  // do something
});​

One more alternate is to make the element readonly instead of disabled, but bear in mind that jQuery does not have a default :readonly selector.

Clicking a disabled input or button

There is no way to capture a click on disabled elements. Your best bet is to react to a specific class on the element.

HTML Markup:

<input type="button" class="disabled" value="click" />

JavaScript code:

$('input').click(function (event) {
    if ($(this).hasClass('disabled')) {
        alert('CLICKED, BUT DISABLED!!');
    } else {
        alert('Not disabled. =)');
    }
});

You could then use CSS styling to simulate a disabled look:

.disabled
{
    background-color: #DDD;
    color: #999;
}

Here's a jsFiddle demonstrating its use.

Event on a disabled input

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).

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