I’m having a strange problem. I am constructing a form with checkboxes to toggle email subscription preferences on and off. For the new user sign-up form, this is straightforward:

$form['marketing-container']['restaurant_newsletter_subscription'] = array(     '#type' => 'checkbox',     '#title' => t('Subscribe to Restaurant Newsletter'),     '#return_value' => "True",     '#default_value' => "False", ); 

However, when it comes to the update user form, I’m running into a problem. If I set #default_value to the existing preference, it will check the boxes for those publications you’re subscribed to correctly, but if you UNcheck those boxes, the form API just returns the default value….which would still be TRUE.

To work around this, I retrieved the subscriber object at the start of the form function, and I’ve added hidden fields whose default values are the existing subscription preference values, just like I attempted to do with the real fields in the first place. Then, I used #states to populate the real fields based on these hidden fields, like so:

$form['marketing-container']['existing_restaurant_newsletter_subscription'] = array(     '#type' => 'checkbox',     '#title' => t('Restaurant Newsletter'),     '#value' => $attributes[15]->Value, );  $form['marketing-container']['restaurant_newsletter_subscription'] = array(     '#type' => 'checkbox',     '#title' => t('Subscribe to Restaurant Newsletter'),     '#return_value' => "True",     '#default_value' => "False",     '#states' => array(         'checked' => array(             ':input[name="existing_restaurant_newsletter_subscription"]' => array('checked' => TRUE)         )     ) ); 

Now this works! The problem is that the first field is visible. Now if I alter this to hide the field:

$form['marketing-container']['existing_restaurant_newsletter_subscription'] = array(     '#type' => 'checkbox',     '#title' => t('Restaurant Newsletter'),     '#value' => $attributes[15]->Value,     '#access' => FALSE, ); 

The field is hidden perfectly….but its value isn’t copied over to the real field that’s still visible.

I’ve searched all over and pored over the Form API documentation, and I’m stumped.

Is there some way to preserve this default value inside the hidden form so it copies over to another field correctly?

If there isn’t, or if it’s more efficient, is there a DIFFERENT method I could use to pre-check this checkbox but still keep a default value of FALSE so that if a user unchecks it, something actually happens? Is there another class of field I’m missing that is a sort of on-off switch that returns specified values for each state?