Question

I have a form with 5 dropdowns that are generated by php at run time that I want to have validated using jQuery validator. Due to the fact that I have given them an array for the name, validator will only validate the first dropdown, but I need to ensure all 5 are being validated before posting my form.

PHP for making the dropdown

function activityDropDown($id){
      echo('<select id='.$id.' name=activity[]>
          <option></option>
          <option>a</option>
          <option>b</option>  
          <option>c</option>
        </select>');
}
<script type="text/javascript">
            $(document).ready(function(){
        $("#friDate").Zebra_DatePicker({
            format: 'm-d-Y',
            disabled_dates: ['* * * 0-4,6'],
            first_day_of_week: 0,
            onSelect: function(){
                var date = new Date($("#friDate").val());
                $("#mon").val(addDays(date, -4));
                $("#tue").val(addDays(date, -3));
                $("#wed").val(addDays(date, -2));
                $("#thu").val(addDays(date, -1));
                $("#fri").val(addDays(date, 0));        
            }
        });
        $("#form").validate();
        $("#monActivity").rules("add", {
            required: true
        });
        $("#tueActivity").rules("add", {
            required: true
        });
    });
</script>
            <tr>
                <td>Activity:</td>
                <td><?php activityDropDown('monActivity') ?></td>
                <td><?php activityDropDown('tueActivity') ?></td>
                <td><?php activityDropDown('wedActivity') ?></td>
                <td><?php activityDropDown('thuActivity') ?></td>
                <td><?php activityDropDown('friActivity') ?></td>
            </tr>

As you can see, I have tried to manually add the rules based off the elements ID, but it is still doing the same thing; only the first dropdown will validate.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Try this:

function activityDropDown($id){
      static $activitynum = 0;
      echo("<select id='$id' name=activity[$activitynum]>
          <option></option>
          <option>a</option>
          <option>b</option>  
          <option>c</option>
        </select>");
      $activitynum++;
}

This works around the limitation in the validation plugin by specifying the array indexes explicitly, so the names are distinct.