How to Make Angular/React Forms Read-Only with Custom Components
When building complex forms in Angular/React, you may encounter situations where you need to make the entire form, or specific parts of it, read-only based on certain conditions. For simple HTML components like <input> we can use disabled property. However, this can be tricky when dealing with custom components and nested structures. In this blog post, we’ll explore a straightforward CSS-based approach to make an Angular form with custom Angular components read-only.
The Challenge
In many enterprise applications, certain forms need to be disabled or set to a read-only state based on user permissions or application state. For instance, if a user is not part of an enterprise subscription, you might want to restrict editing capabilities in some forms.
Angular provides various ways to achieve this, but in this post, we’ll focus on using CSS to accomplish this, which is simple, effective, and keeps your HTML clean.
.readonly {
pointer-events: none;
opacity: 0.5;
/* Optional: to give a disabled look */
} <form [formGroup]="brandingForm" [class.readonly]="!isEnterpriseUser">
<!-- form controls to be readonly -->
</form>
