Should selected & disabled <option> elements be included when serialising a form?

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Can anyone tell me whether selected & disabled <option> elements should be included when serialising a form?

I thought the answer would come easily from checking out the behaviour of some JavaScript frameworks, yet they differ in their behaviour.

Prototype 1.7.0.0 does serialise them, but jQuery 1.7.2 does not. I've put together a test page here where you can see the results: [URL unfurl="true"]http://jsfiddle.net/CodeCouch/YR263/[/url]

I thought I'd refer to the WHATWG documentation on the FormData object, but it only talks about selected options or disabled options - never when an option is both selected and disabled.

I guess there's no "right" answer, and ultimately I should run with whichever behaviour suits my needs... but it would be nice to know what the general consensus is on this.

Thanks!

Dan



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[vacunita]

The behavior for them is pretty standard across the board for selected and disabled options at the same time.

While they start out selected, they can never be selected again if something else is selected.

So the question of whether or not to serialize becomes a question of whether it is still the selected option or not.

If something else has been selected, then I'd say no, don't serialize, as they are just a disabled item.

If they are still a selected option at the time, then yes serialize, as it becomes a required value.

Which brings us to the conclusion, that if they are both disabled and selected or rather disabled "BUT" selected, then they should be serialized.

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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