why are unchecked checkboxes not submittable?

[stephenmathieson]

i'm doing this to compensate and it just seems wrong:

var data = serialize.object(form)
data.checkboxthing = data.checkboxthing || false

[dominicbarnes]

Fwiw, the HTML5 spec calls for unchecked elements to be skipped altogether when constructing the dataset. I think it would be good to mimic this behavior, as it's already defined and probably expected by most users/developers.

[yields]

is there any case where someone would want unchecked elements to be skipped ? +1 to setting false when they are unchecked just cuz doying || false is a PITA.

[dominicbarnes]

afaik, the recommended way to approach this is to have 2 inputs:

<input type="hidden" name="check" value="false">
<input type="checkbox" name="check" value="true">

If the checkbox is checked, true will clobber the false. When unchecked, false shows through instead.

[dominicbarnes]

(that's how my form serialize library will handle this in my upcoming version anyways)

[stephenmathieson]

here's my use case:

• [x] display things that matter to you but maybe not someone else
• [ ] display things that don't matter to anyone

if the second checkbox isn't submitted, then how do i know a user doesn't want to display things that don't matter to anyone?

i've already deployed with || false, so i'm not terribly worried about it, but it'd be nice to clean up some of that garbage in a future iteration.

[stephenmathieson]

@yields any thoughts on default behaviour here?

[yields]

sounds right to me :)