How can I Enable\Disable all subcontrols of a table?

Question

Hi,

I have a checkBox, which when it's checked i want to enable a table and its subcontrols and when it's disabled I want to do the opposite.

I have already understand that I have to iterate all subControls of the table, and my question is if there is any nice and generic way of doing it.

Thanks in advance,

oz.

Answer 1

It's a lot easier to do with with a selector and a class name using a framework, for example (using Prototype.js).

When this item is clicked, enable all items with class of 'mycontrols'.

$('containerDiv').select('.mycontrols').each(function(element){element.disabled=false})

Answer 2

You can do this with jQuery. Let's say that your HTML looks like this:

<input type="checkbox" onclick="toggleControls(this)"/>Controls Disabled
<table id="myTable">
 <tr>
  <td>Name: <input type="text" /></td>
  <td>Select: <input type="radio" /></td>
 </tr> .....

The toggleControls() function to disable/enable all the controls inside the table (this means all textboxes, buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdowns) looks like this:

<script>
   function toggleControls(e){
     $('#myTable input,select,textarea').attr('disabled',e.checked);
   }
</script>

jQuery's css selectors make that one line to disable/enable the controls possible. With plain old javascript, the function would look like this:

var myTable = document.getElementById("myTable");
var controls= myTable.getElementsByTagName("input"); 
// Repeat the previous line for "select" and "textarea"
for(i = 0; i < controls.length; i++) {
    control = controls[i];
    control.disabled = !control.disabled;        
}