Question

I have a form with multiple checkboxes and I want to use JavaScript to make sure at least one is checked. This is what I have right now but no matter what is chosen an alert pops up.

JS (wrong)

function valthis(){
 if (document.FC.c1.checked) {
   alert ("thank you for checking a checkbox")
  } else  {
   alert ("please check a checkbox")
  }
}

HTML

<p>Please select at least one Checkbox</p>
<br>
<br>
<form name = "FC">
<input type = "checkbox" name = "c1" value = "c1"/> C1 
<br>
<input type = "checkbox" name = "c1" value = "c2"/> C2
<br>
<input type = "checkbox" name = "c1" value = "c3"/> C3
<br> 
<input type = "checkbox" name = "c1" value = "c4"/> C4 
<br>
</form>
<br>
<br>

<input type = "button" value = "Edit and Report" onClick = "valthisform();">

So what I ended up doing in JS was this:

function valthisform(){
 var chkd = document.FC.c1.checked || document.FC.c2.checked||document.FC.c3.checked|| document.FC.c4.checked

 if (chkd == true){

 } else {
    alert ("please check a checkbox")
 }

}

I decided to drop the “Thank you” part to fit in with the rest of the assignment. Thank you so much, every ones advice really helped out.

Answer 1

You should avoid having two checkboxes with the same name if you plan to reference them like document.FC.c1. If you have multiple checkboxes named c1 how will the browser know which you are referring to?

Here’s a non-jQuery solution to check if any checkboxes on the page are checked.

var checkboxes = document.querySelectorAll('input[type="checkbox"]');
var checkedOne = Array.prototype.slice.call(checkboxes).some(x => x.checked);

You need the Array.prototype.slice.call part to convert the NodeList returned by document.querySelectorAll into an array that you can call some on.