Question

I have a dynamically generated form with input fields with the same name (for example: “map”). I do not have the option of changing the field names or generating unique field names because the form handler code (Perl/CGI) is designed to handle an array of input values (in this case @map).

How can I use the JQuery Validate Plugin to validate a form in such a situation? Specifically I would want exactly one element of the submitted array to have a certain fixed value. I am currently using a custom event handler that creates a JSON object with serializeArray() and then traverses it to ensure that the condition is met. But since I have used the Validate Plugin in the rest of the application, I was wondering if such a case may be handled using the same plugin here too.

Thank you for your attention.

Answer 1

I spent some time searching and trying different things when finally I tried the most trivial way of doing validation on multiple fields. Each field and it’s clones share a class unique to each set. I just looped through the inputs with that class and added my validation rules as usual. I hope this might help someone else.

    $("#submit").click(function(){
    $("input.years").each(function(){
        $(this).rules("add", {
            required: true,
            messages: {
                required: "Specify the years you worked"
            }
        } );            
    });

    $("input.employerName").each(function(){
        $(this).rules("add", {
            required: true,
            messages: {
                required: "Specify the employer name"
            }
        } );            
    }); 

    $("input.employerPhone").each(function(){
        $(this).rules("add", {
            required: true,
            minlength: 10,
            messages: {
                required: "Specify the employer phone number",
                minlength: "Not long enough"
            }
        } );            
    }); 

    $("input.position").each(function(){
        $(this).rules("add", {
            required: true,
            messages: {
                required: "Specify your position"
            }
        } );            
    });             

    $("input.referenceName").each(function(){
        $(this).rules("add", {
            required: true,
            messages: {
                required: "Specify the reference name"
            }
        } );            
    });         

    $("input.referencePhone").each(function(){
        $(this).rules("add", {
            required: true,
            minlength: 10,
            messages: {
                required: "Specify your reference phone number",
                minlength: "Not long enough"
            }
        } );            
    });

// Now do your normal validation here, but don't assign rules/messages for the fields we just set them for





});