silverstripe-framework/docs/en/02_Developer_Guides/03_Forms/05_Form_Transformations.md

title: Form Transformations summary: Provide read-only and disabled views of your Form data.

Read-only and Disabled Forms

[api:Form] and [api:FormField] instances can be turned into a read-only version for things like confirmation pages or when certain fields cannot be edited due to permissions. Creating the form is done the same way and markup is similar, readonly mode converts the input, select and textarea tags to static HTML elements like span.

To make an entire [api:Form] read-only.

:::php
$form = new Form(..);
$form->makeReadonly();

To make all the fields within a [api:FieldList] read-only (i.e to make fields read-only but not buttons).

:::php
$fields = new FieldList(..);
$fields = $fields->makeReadonly();

To make a [api:FormField] read-only you need to know the name of the form field or call it direct on the object

:::php
$field = new TextField(..);
$field = $field->performReadonlyTransformation();

$fields = new FieldList(
	$field
);

// Or,
$field = new TextField(..);
$field->setReadonly(true);

$fields = new FieldList(
	$field
);

Disabled FormFields

Disabling [api:FormField] instances, sets the disabled property on the class. This will use the same HTML markup as a normal form, but set the disabled attribute on the input tag.

:::php
$field = new TextField(..);
$field->setDisabled(true);

echo $field->forTemplate();

// returns '<input type="text" class="text" .. disabled="disabled" />'