Easier SetFields method? (proposed change?)

[eluser]litzinger[/eluser]
Although the Validation class and all that saves me a ton of time with forms, I still find it kind of tedious to work with, mainly having to declare $rules[] and $fields[] for every form field I want to validate. So while working on a form a few minutes ago, it stuck me that I was being very repetitive.

Instead of setting $fields['my_field'] = 'My Field'; why can't I just take that key value 'my_field' from the $rules array that I already declared, and strip the underscore and capitalize the first character of the words?

Here is what my validation looks like now...

Code:

$rules['name'] = 'required';  
$rules['ssn'] = 'required';
$rules['address'] = 'required';
$rules['city'] = 'required';
$rules['state'] = 'required';
$rules['zip'] = 'required|min_length[5]';
$rules['email'] = 'required|valid_email';
$rules['home_phone'] = 'required|min_length[7]';  
$rules['work_phone'] = 'min_length[7]';
$rules['fax'] = 'min_length[7]';
$rules['emergency_name'] = 'required';
$rules['emergency_phone'] = 'required';
$rules['emergency_relationship'] = 'required';  

$rules['occupation'] = 'required';
$rules['employer'] = 'required';  
$rules['employer_address'] = 'required';  
$rules['supervisor_name'] = 'required';  
$rules['supervisor_phone'] = 'required';  
$rules['education'] = 'required';  
$rules['major_degree'] = 'required';  

$Validation->SetRules($rules);

$fields['ssn'] = 'Social Security Number';

$Validation->SetFields($fields);

And the SetFields method change:

Code:

function SetFields($data = '', $field = '', $separator = '_')
    {    
        if ($data == '')
        {
            if (count($this->_fields) == 0 && count($this->_rules) == 0)
            {
                return FALSE;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            if ( ! is_array($data))
            {
                $data = array($data => $field);
            }
            
            if (count($data) > 0)
            {
                $this->_fields = $data;
            }
        }    
        
        foreach($this->_rules as $key => $val)
        {                  
            $text = ucwords(str_replace($separator, ' ', $key));            
            $auto_fields[$key] = $text;    
        }  
        
        $this->_fields = array_merge($auto_fields, $this->_fields);    
            
        foreach($this->_fields as $key => $val)
        {        
            $this->$key = ( ! isset($_POST[$key]) OR is_array($_POST[$key])) ? '' : $this->prep_for_form($_POST[$key]);
            
            $error = $key.'_error';
            if ( ! isset($this->$error))
            {
                $this->$error = '';
            }
        }        
    }

I'm just searching the _rules for the text, reformatting it, and if I still want to pass specific error text to that field I still can, and just merge the arrays to produce the final array.

Outputs:

Code:

1. The Name field is required.
   2. The Social Security Number field is required.
   3. The Address field is required.
   4. The City field is required.
   5. The State field is required.
   6. The Zip field is required.
   7. The Email field is required.
   8. The Home Phone field is required.
   9. The Emergency Name field is required.
  10. The Emergency Phone field is required.
  11. The Emergency Relationship field is required.
  12. The Occupation field is required.
  13. The Employer field is required.
  14. The Employer Address field is required.
  15. The Supervisor Name field is required.
  16. The Supervisor Phone field is required.
  17. The Education field is required.
  18. The Major Degree field is required.

Opinions?