Spring / Thymeleaf checkbox compatibility issue

Hello,

I’d like to let you know that there’s a compatibility issue with Thymeleaf templating engine (used in Spring framework).

The issue in question: Required structure of checkbox input in Materialize is following (<p> can be replaced for any other tag AFAIK):

<p>
    <input type="checkbox">
    <label> ... </label>
</p>

With CSS code used to target the label being:

[type="checkbox"] + label { ... }

Meaning “a label right after a checkbox”. Problem is that Thymeleaf adds additional <input type="hidden"> element after each checkbox input, breaking the checkbox + label selector. Following is actual Thymeleaf code I use in one of my projects. It uses a th:each loop to go over a list of items:

<div th:each="anArtwork : ${listOfArtworks}" class="row">
    <div class="col s12">
        <p>
            <input th:field="*{artworks}" th:value="${anArtwork.id}" type="checkbox" class="filled-in">
            <label th:for="${#ids.prev('artworks')}" th:text="${anArtwork.nameSk}"></label>
        </p>
    </div>
</div>

Which results into the following HTML code (generated repeatedly for each item in list with small differences in ID-related values):

<div class="row">
    <div class="col s12">
        <p>
            <input class="filled-in" type="checkbox" value="2" id="artworks2" name="artworks" />
            <input type="hidden" name="_artworks" value="on" />
            <label for="artworks2"> ... </label>
        </p>
    </div>
</div>

This of course breaks previous CSS selector for checkbox + label elements, as it adds additional element between them. Workaround I’m using adds additional selector to the CSS code in Materialize like this:

[type="checkbox"] + label,
[type="checkbox"] + [type="hidden"] + label { ... }

Which accounts for the additional hidden input and thus targets the required label. This is a Thymeleaf-specific solution only however and fastest one I could think of for my project.

My suggestion for a full compatibility fix/solution would be adding a mandatory wrapper element (like <p> or <span>) with a mandatory class (eg.: .material-checkbox) to the material checkboxes and target the inside checkbox and label elements using this class (.material-checkbox [type="checkbox"] and .material-checkbox label) instead of relying on the fact that the two elements will always be next to each other, which in Thymeleaf is not the case:

<p class="materialize-checkbox">
    <input type="checkbox">
    <label> ... </label>
</p>

.materialize-select [type="checkbox"] { ... }
.materialize-select label { ... }

I understand this add additional complexity and constraints on the Materialize framework, however as I said, a change on the part of Thymeleaf is not really possible. Or someone could devise a different solution, CSS/HTML is not really my primary focus, so there might be better options than what I suggested.

[tgmarinho]

I did so, at the bottom of the page:

<script>
	$('input[type=hidden]').remove();
</script>

Its Works!

[andhen]

tgmarinho: The complete solution is in my answer from 9 May. It does, however require recompiling Materialize. I’ll see if I can put in a pull request for it.

Your javascript workaround breaks quite a lot of things, including spring form handling and CSRF protection.