JSF component value not properly updated to model upon submit

Question

I have facelets page with a control that usually is disabled by default, i. e. when the page is first rendered to the client. This is determined by an EL expression:

disabled="#{referenceValue != requestbean.dependentControlValue}" id="notWorking"

After the page is rendered, the user can set the requestbean.dependentControlValue to referenceValue and via some Javascript for the dependent control, the component "notWorking" is enabled.

However, upon submitting the form the value for notWorking does not get updated as found out by adding a debug log message in the setter for the value. I can see, that the value for notWorking is set in the request when inspecting it with firefox.

Question: What am I doing wrong?

By the way:
I know that according to HTML specification, disabled controls cannot be successful thanks to the research here on StackOverflow.

Moreover, I know from this post, that the disabled and rendered expressions are considered before updating the model values, but I think the disabled expression should evaluate to false upon submitting the form.

Answer 1

What am I doing wrong?

Using JavaScript instead of JSF to re-enable the input.

As part of JSF's builtin safeguard against tampered/hacked HTTP requests, the disabled attribute is (like rendered and readonly attributes) re-evaluated during processing the form submit. If they evaluate in such way that the value shouldn't be processed at all (i.e. disabled/readonly=true and rendered=false, then the submitted value won't be applied, converted, validated and the model won't be updated.

The solution would be to use JSF instead of JavaScript to re-enable the input, or to rewrite the condition in disabled attribute in such way so that the disabled attribute evaluates false during processing the form submit.