Question

I’m performing all my form validation in a class, and would like to be able to get the errors from the class to the rendered html. One approach I was thinking about was to create a global variable “c” that would store all the errors and to set them from within the class, as I still want the individual methods to return false when they fail. Here is some sample code:

class User():

def add(self):

    #Check that e-mail has been completed
    try:
        #Validate e-mail address
        if (isAddressValid(self.email)):
            c.error = 'Invalid e-mail address'
            return 0
    except NameError:
        c.error = 'No e-mail address specified'
        return 0

Is there a better or preferred way to do this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I like to use a dictionary to hold the errors and warnings. Then I can either show all errors at the top of the form or inline. I also define error and warning variables so I can easily tell the two apart.

class User(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.messages = {}

    def add(self):
        error = False
        warning = False

        #Check that name has a space
        try:
            if (self.name.find(' ') == -1):
                warning = True
                self.messages['email'] = {'type': 'warning',
                                          'msg': 'Your name has no space.'}
        except NameError:
            error = True
            self.messages['email'] = {'type': 'error',
                                      'msg': 'You have no name.'}

        #Check that e-mail has been completed
        try:
            #Validate e-mail address
            if (isAddressValid(self.email)):
                error = True
                self.messages['email'] = {'type': 'error',
                                          'msg': 'Invalid e-mail address'}
        except NameError:
            error = True
            self.messages['email'] = {'type': 'error',
                                      'msg': 'No e-mail address specified'}

        return error, warning