Remove the "required" Attribute using JavaScript

Remove the "required" Attribute using JavaScript #

To remove the required attribute, select the element and call the removeAttribute() method on it, passing it required as a parameter, e.g. input.removeAttribute('required'). The removeAttribute method will remove the required attribute from the element.

Here is the HTML for the examples in this article.

index.html

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <input type="text" id="first_name" required />

    <script src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

And here is the related JavaScript code.

index.js

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const input = document.getElementById('first_name');

// ✅ Remove required attribute
input.removeAttribute('required');

// ✅ Set required attribute
// input.setAttribute('required', '');

We selected the input element using the document.getElementById() method.

We then used the removeAttribute method to remove the required attribute from the element.

The method takes the attribute to remove as a parameter.

If the attribute does not exist on the element, the removeAttribute() method does not throw an error, it ignores the call.

When setting the value of a boolean attribute, such as required, we can specify any value for the attribute and it will work.

If the attribute is present at all, regardless of the value, its value is considered to be true.

If a boolean attribute, such as required, is not present, the value of the attribute is considered to be false.

If you need to add an attribute, you can use the setAttribute method.

index.js

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const input = document.getElementById('first_name');

// ✅ Remove required attribute
input.removeAttribute('required');

// ✅ Set required attribute
input.setAttribute('required', '');

The method takes the attribute name as the first parameter and the value that should be assigned to the attribute as the second.

When setting boolean attributes, such as required, it's a best practice to set them to an empty value. That's why we passed an empty string as the value in the example.

The required attribute can be set to any value and as long as it is present on the element, it does the job.

Note that you should only call the removeAttribute() method on DOM elements. If you need to remove the required attribute from a collection of elements, you have to iterate over the collection and call the method on each individual element.

Here is the HTML for the next example.

index.html

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <input type="text" id="first_name" class="field" required />
    <input type="text" id="last_name" class="field" required />
    <input type="text" id="country" class="field" required />

    <script src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

And here is the related JavaScript code.

index.js

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const inputs = document.querySelectorAll('.field');

for (const input of inputs) {
  // ✅ Remove required attribute
  input.removeAttribute('required');
}

We used the document.querySelectorAll method to select all elements with a class of field.

We used the for...of loop to iterate over the collection and remove the required attribute from each element.

Remove the "required" Attribute using JavaScript

Remove the "required" Attribute using JavaScript #

Borislav Hadzhiev