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01-26-2011, 05:29 PM

[eluser]diez[/eluser]
Recently I've had the need to add custom form errors while using the form validation class. I know I can create a callback function within the set_rule() method. However, during certain situations this caused me to make duplicate database calls.

Here's how you would use the add_custom_error() function:

Controller

Code:
$this->load->library('form_validation'); 

if ($this->input->post('email') != $user_email_from_database)

{

    $this->form_validation->add_custom_error('email_field', "The email entered is not registered as an account.");   

}

if ($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE)

{    

     $this->load->view('login/login_view'); 

}

View

Code:
&lt;html&gt;

.......

&lt;?php echo validation_errors(); ?&gt; &lt;!-- will display both native and custom errors--&gt;

<h1>New User</h1>

&lt;?php echo form_open('login'); ?&gt;

<h5>Email Address</h5>

&lt;?php echo form_error('email'); ?&gt; &lt;!-- will display both native and custom errors--&gt; 

&lt;input type="text" name="email" value="&lt;?php echo set_value('email'); ?&gt;" size="50" /&gt;

.......

<div>&lt;input type="submit" value="Submit" /&gt;&lt;/div>

&lt;/form&gt;

.......

&lt;/html&gt;

NOTE:

There are 2 ways of outputting the errors.

you can use:

Code:
1.) echo form_error('email'); &lt;!-- will display individual error msg associated with the form field  --&gt; 

2.) echo validation_errors(); &lt;!-- will display all form error msgs as a batch --&gt;

native errors will be displayed first (if there are any) then, custom errors will be displayed in second priority.

If you want to use the add_custom_error() function extending the form validation class in CI, you can implement the following:

1.) Download the MY_Form_validation.php attachment and save it in your application/library folder

The only code added in the extended class is the following:

Code:
//***class variable we define at the top of our extended class

var $custom_field_errors = array(); //array that hold fields from errors

//***new function

function add_custom_error($field = '', $error_message = '')

{

    if($field == '')

    {

       return '';

    }

    $this->custom_field_errors[$field]  = $error_message;

    return true;

}

//***code snippet that is added into the run() method that we extend

//insert custom errors into native form validation error arrays

if(count($this->custom_field_errors) > 0)

{

    foreach($this->custom_field_errors as $field => $error_message)

    {

        $this->_error_array[$field] = $error_message;

        $this->_field_data[$field]['error'] = $error_message;

    } 

}