Question

How to add an error message to Zend Form element after the form was already validated?

I’m trying to add error mesages I get from Zend_Auth (now I’m displaying them using flashMessenger).

I tried something like this:

$form->getElement('username')->addErrorMessage('my message');

Answer 1

From the zend form documentation –

addErrorMessage($message): add an
error message to display on form
validation errors. You may call this
more than once, and new messages are
appended to the stack.

addError($message): add a message to
the custom error messages stack and
flag the form as invalid.

If your form is not marked as invalid, it probably doesn’t show any error messages. Using addError($message) rather than addErrorMessage($message) will ensure that the element is also marked invalid.