Question

My form has several rather complex validation rules and it became necessary for me to temporarily disable a given rule only to enable it later. It seemed pointless having to remove it and then add it again later so I needed a facility to disable and enable validation rules.

Answer 1

Starting with jquery.validate.js from version 1.8.1 I added in 2 case statments to the “rules” function so that the command switch statement reads as follows.

switch(command) {
case "add":
    $.extend(existingRules, $.validator.normalizeRule(argument));
    staticRules[element.name] = existingRules;
    if (argument.messages)
        settings.messages[element.name] = $.extend( settings.messages[element.name], argument.messages );
    break;
case "remove":
    if (!argument) {
        delete staticRules[element.name];
        return existingRules;
    }
    var filtered = {};
    $.each(argument.split(/\s/), function(index, method) {
        filtered[method] = existingRules[method];
        delete existingRules[method];
    });
    return filtered;
case "disable":
    if (!argument) {
        return false;
    }
    $.each(argument.split(/\s/), function(index, method) {
        existingRules[method].disabled=true;
    });
    break;
case "enable":
    if (!argument) {
        return false;
    }
    $.each(argument.split(/\s/), function(index, method) {
        existingRules[method].disabled=false;
    });
    break;
}

Then to implement this, in the “check” function we add a conditional to check the state of this disabled parameter we have set. Notably, if the rule has never been disabled/enabled then the value will be undefined, we assume here that if its undefined we’re happy with the rule. The loop statement for this function now starts with:

for (var method in rules ) {
    var rule = { method: method, parameters: rules[method] };
    try {
        if (typeof rule.parameters["disabled"] === 'undefined' || rule.parameters["disabled"] == false)
        {
            var result = $.validator.methods[method].call( this, element.value.replace(/\r/g, ""), element, rule.parameters );
        } else {
            continue;
        }

Use this just as you would the “add” and “remove” facilty, e.g.

$('#email_address').rules("disable", "remote");
$('#email_address').rules("enable", "remote");

I hope this helps someone, I’ve been bashing my head against the wall trying to get to here.