Question

UPDATED

I’m creating a codeigniter callback for validating an input where users enter programming tags for example php, js, jquery. Values are separated by commas.

I want to show a message if you enter duplicate tags for example php, jquery, php, js where php would be the duplicate.

First in my controller I set the validation rules for the ‘user_tags` input

$this->form_validation->set_rules('user_tags', 'User Tags', 'callback_user_tags_dublicates', 'trim|xss_clean|max_length[100]|regex_match[/^[a-z,0-9+# ]+$/i]');

Then the callback

<?php function user_tags_dublicates($str)
        {
            $val = $str; //the input value (all the CSV)
            $tags = str_getcsv($val); //creates an array of the CSV
            if(count($tags) != count(array_unique($tags))) //if array not equal to unique array it contains duplicates
            {
                $this->form_validation->set_message('user_tags', 'The %s field can not have duplicate tags.');
                return FALSE;
            }
            else
            {
                return TRUE;
            }
        } ?>

and finally in the view I show my error.

<?php echo form_error('user_tags'); ?>

When I enter duplicate tags I get

Unable to access an error message corresponding to your field name.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. I tested the function in a static page without validation rules and it works.

Answer 1

set your error message for user_tags inside your user_tags_dublicates() function

   $this->form_validation->set_message('user_tags', 'The %s field can not have duplicate tags.');