Is there a common way or best practice, for creating a HTML "checkbox" form field

Yes. Use a templating system.

and marking it checked?

Yes. Use the templating system to pass the variable along, or use JavaScript/jQuery.

With that said, please, for the love of all things good, make sure this isn't an attempt to sucker someone into something that they then have to opt-out of. Any field that subscribes or commits someone to something should ALWAYS be unchecked by default. In such situations, default enabled is unscrupulous at best, and outright immoral and unethical (and more) at worst.

In reply to Re: Marking "checkbox" html field checked by stevieb
in thread Marking "checkbox" html field checked by djlerman

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.