Using Checkboxes to Make Forms More Friendly

Value

A string representing the value of the checkbox. This is not displayed on the client-side, but on the server this is the value given to the data submitted with the checkbox's name. Take the following example:

<form>
  <div>
    <input
      type="checkbox"
      id="subscribeNews"
      name="subscribe"
      value="newsletter" />
    <label for="subscribeNews">Subscribe to newsletter?</label>
  </div>
  <div>
    <button type="submit">Subscribe</button>
  </div>
</form>

In this example, we've got a name of subscribe, and a value of newsletter. When the form is submitted, the data name/value pair will be subscribe=newsletter.

If the value attribute was omitted, the default value for the checkbox is on, so the submitted data in that case would be subscribe=on.

Note: If a checkbox is unchecked when its form is submitted, neither the name nor the value is submitted to the server. There is no HTML-only method of representing a checkbox's unchecked state (e.g. value=unchecked). If you wanted to submit a default value for the checkbox when it is unchecked, you could include JavaScript to create a <input type="hidden"> within the form with a value indicating an unchecked state.