Question

I am using jQuery validate for client side validation and I want to ignore any element that has the style="display: none"

$("#myform").validate({
   ignore: "?"
});

What would my selector be for that in the above case?

Answer 1

Note: As of version 1.9.0, ignore: ":hidden" is the default option, so it does not have to be set explicitly anymore.

---

Use :hidden:

Elements can be considered hidden for several reasons:

• They have a display value of none.
• They are form elements with type=”hidden”.
• Their width and height are explicitly set to 0.
• An ancestor element is hidden, so the element is not shown on the page.

$("#myform").validate({
   ignore: ":hidden"
});

---

Update: for completeness, from the plugin’s documentation:

ignore
Elements to ignore when validating, simply filtering them out. jQuery’s not-method is used, therefore everything that is accepted by not() can be passed as this option. Inputs of type submit and reset are always ignored, so are disabled elements.