I need to enable the validation of hidden fields using ASP.net MVC3 unobtrusive validation.
The reason behind this is a jquery plugin which hides the original input field to show something fancier. But this disables validation of the field as it becomes hidden.
I tried to use the following code but without success.
$("form").validate({
ignore: ""
});
Thanks
With a hint from this Question I was able to manipulate the options of the unobtrusive validator object.
var validator = $("#myFormId").data('validator');
validator.settings.ignore = "";
Related
I'm trying to implement a checkbox captcha I read about here:
http://uxmovement.com/forms/captchas-vs-spambots-why-the-checkbox-captcha-wins/
However I'm having issues adding the checkbox with client side javascript and unobtrusive validation.
I implemented a checkbox with unobtrusive validation based on Darin Dimitrov's answer here: MVC unobtrusive validation on checkbox not working which works perfectly.
However, once I remove the checkbox from my view and add it with this jquery code instead:
jQuery(document).ready(function (jQuery) {
$('div.test').append($("<input>").attr("id", "AcceptsTerms")
.attr("type", "checkbox")
.val("true")
.attr("name", "AcceptsTerms")
.attr("data-val-required", "This field is required.")
.attr("data-val-mustbetrue", "You must accept the terms and conditions")
.attr("data-val", "true")
.addClass("input-validation-error"));
$('div.test').append($('<input>').attr("type", "hidden")
.val("value", "false")
.attr("name", "AcceptsTerms"));
$('div.test').append($("<label>").attr("for", "AcceptsTerms")
.html("Accept terms and conditions"));
$('div.test').append($('<span>').addClass("field-validation-error")
.attr("data-valmsg-replace", "true")
.attr("data-valmsg-for", "AcceptsTerms"));
});
it no longer wants to validate. Are there any known issues with adding form elements after the document has loaded and unobtrusive validation? If so, has any attempted to implement this or have any suggestions on how to go about this?
Looks like I found the solution.
As I suspected and as Sparky mentioned: the jQuery Validate plugin is initialized once on the DOM ready event. Due to this, all I had to do after adding my input dynamically was to reinitialize unobtrusive validation.
I added this first for the rule:
$.validator.unobtrusive.adapters.addBool("mustbetrue", "required");
Then I added this to reinitialize unobtrusive validation:
$("form").removeData('validator');
$("form").removeData('unobtrusiveValidation');
$.validator.unobtrusive.parse($("form"));
Quote OP:
However, once I remove the checkbox from my view and add it with this
jquery code instead: {snip} it no longer wants to validate. Are there
any known issues with adding form elements after the document has
loaded and unobtrusive validation? If so, has any attempted to
implement this or have any suggestions on how to go about this?
This happens because the jQuery Validate plugin is initialized once on the DOM ready event but your checkbox does not yet exist. It's an all-too-common misconception that .validate() is called repeatedly as the user interacts with the form. It is not. .validate() is called once on DOM ready to initialize the plugin and form validation happens automatically when triggered by the default events.
If you need to dynamically alter the form's HTML, you must use one of the plugin's built-in methods to dynamically alter its options.
In your case, you need to use the rules('add') method, sometime after your jQuery adds the checkbox, to alter the rules option to apply your checkbox rule(s).
$(document).ready(function() {
$('div.test').append($("<input>").attr("id", "AcceptsTerms"). ... );
$('#AcceptsTerms').rules('add', {
required: true,
another_rule: parameter,
messages: { // <- this item is optional
required: "custom message"
another_rule: "custom message for this rule"
}
});
...
});
To make unobtrusive validation work in asp.net mvc3 you have to use the html helper #Html.BeginForm() as mentioned in this very good post : http://bradwilson.typepad.com/blog/2010/10/mvc3-unobtrusive-validation.html.
Without using the helper unobtrusive validation will not be triggered. I could verify that.
Can you explain me what does the helper #Html.BeginForm() do to allow unobtrusive validation to be triggered when the form is submitted ?
Can you also explain me how could I do that manually (read allow unobtrusive validation without calling the #Html.BeginForm()) ?
Please note that I know I can call unobtrusive validation using $("#myform").valid() but I would like to know the magic behind the helper and how to reproduce it.
When you call BeginForm (see http://j.mp/WrmAyk for the FormExtensionsclass), a new MvcForm object is created.
If you look in the constructor of this class (see http://j.mp/Wrml6F for the MvcForm class) you will see that it creates a new FormContext object: _viewContext.FormContext = new FormContext();.
When an input, textarea or select is rendered using the HTML helper, the following is called: tagBuilder.MergeAttributes(htmlHelper.GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(name, metadata));, which takes care of rendering the validation attributes from the model metadata.
This GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes method (see http://j.mp/Wrn4oa for the HtmlHelper class) checks to see if the FormContext is null before rendering attributes:
FormContext formContext = ViewContext.GetFormContextForClientValidation();
if (formContext == null)
{
return results;
}
This is why no validation attributes are rendered unless you are within a form. You can get round this by creating a 'fake' FormContext, like #karaxuna suggests.
Write this in your view and it will work:
ViewContext.FormContext = ViewContext.FormContext ?? new FormContext();
When code is inside #Html.Beginform (in the same view), then html element validation attributes are got from metadata, In other case, it is not.
In the new version of jQuery validation plugin 1.9 by default validation of hidden fields ignored. I'm using CKEditor for textarea input field and it hides the field and replace it with iframe. The field is there, but validation disabled for hidden fields. With validation plugin version 1.8.1 everything works as expected.
So my question is how to enable validation for hidden fields with v1.9 validation plugin.
This setting doesn't work:
$.validator.setDefaults({ ignore: '' });
The plugin's author says you should use "square brackets without the quotes", []
http://bassistance.de/2011/10/07/release-validation-plugin-1-9-0/
Release: Validation Plugin 1.9.0:
"...Another change should make the setup of forms with hidden elements
easier, these are now ignored by default (option “ignore” has
“:hidden” now as default). In theory, this could break an existing
setup. In the unlikely case that it actually does, you can fix it by
setting the ignore-option to “[]” (square brackets without the
quotes)."
To change this setting for all forms:
$.validator.setDefaults({
ignore: [],
// any other default options and/or rules
});
(It is not required that .setDefaults() be within the document.ready function)
OR for one specific form:
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#myform').validate({
ignore: [],
// any other options and/or rules
});
});
EDIT:
See this answer for how to enable validation on some hidden fields but still ignore others.
EDIT 2:
Before leaving comments that "this does not work", keep in mind that the OP is simply asking about the jQuery Validate plugin and his question has nothing to do with how ASP.NET, MVC, or any other Microsoft framework can alter this plugin's normal expected behavior. If you're using a Microsoft framework, the default functioning of the jQuery Validate plugin is over-written by Microsoft's unobtrusive-validation plugin.
If you're struggling with the unobtrusive-validation plugin, then please refer to this answer instead: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11053251/594235
This worked for me, within an ASP.NET MVC3 site where I'd left the framework to setup unobtrusive validation etc., in case it's useful to anyone:
$("form").data("validator").settings.ignore = "";
Make sure to put
$.validator.setDefaults({ ignore: '' });
NOT inside $(document).ready
So I'm going to go a bit deeper in to why this doesn't work because I'm the kind of person that can't sleep at night without knowing haha. I'm using jQuery validate 1.10 and Microsoft jQuery Unobtrusive Validation 2.0.20710.0 which was published on 1/29/2013.
I started by searching for the setDefaults method in jQuery Validate and found it on line 261 of the unminified file. All this function really does is merge your json settings in to the existing $.validator.defaults which are initialized with the ignore property being set to ":hidden" along with the other defaults defined in jQuery Validate. So at this point we've overridden ignore. Now let's see where this defaults property is being referenced at.
When I traced through the code to see where $.validator.defaults is being referenced. I noticed that is was only being used by the constructor for a form validator, line 170 in jQuery validate unminified file.
// constructor for validator
$.validator = function( options, form ) {
this.settings = $.extend( true, {}, $.validator.defaults, options );
this.currentForm = form;
this.init();
};
At this point a validator will merge any default settings that were set and attach it to the form validator. When you look at the code that is doing the validating, highlighting, unhighlighting, etc they all use the validator.settings object to pull the ignore property. So we need to make sure if we are to set the ignore with the setDefaults method then it has to occur before the $("form").validate() is called.
If you're using Asp.net MVC and the unobtrusive plugin, then you'll realize after looking at the javascript that validate is called in document.ready. I've also called my setDefaults in the document.ready block which is going to execute after the scripts, jquery validate and unobtrusive because I've defined those scripts in the html before the one that has the call in it. So my call obviously had no impact on the default functionality of skipping hidden elements during validation. There is a couple of options here.
Option 1 - You could as Juan Mellado pointed out have the call outside of the document.ready which would execute as soon as the script has been loaded. I'm not sure about the timing of this since browsers are now capable of doing parallel script loading. If I'm just being over cautious then please correct me. Also, there's probably ways around this but for my needs I did not go down this path.
Option 2a - The safe bet in my eyes is to just replace the $.validator.setDefaults({ ignore: '' }); inside of the document.ready event with $("form").data("validator").settings.ignore = "";. This will modify the ignore property that is actually used by jQuery validate when doing each validation on your elements for the given form.
Options 2b - After looking in to the code a bit more you could also use $("form").validate().settings.ignore = ""; as a way of setting the ignore property. The reason is that when looking at the validate function it checks to see if a validator object has already been stored for the form element via the $.data() function. If it finds a validator object stored with the form element then it just returns the validator object instead of creating another one.
This worked for me within an ASP.NET site.
To enable validation on some hidden fields use this code
$("form").data("validator").settings.ignore = ":hidden:not(#myitem)";
To enable validation for all elements of form use this one
$("form").data("validator").settings.ignore = "";
Note that use them within $(document).ready(function() { })
Just added ignore: [] in the specific page for the specific form, this solution worked for me.
$("#form_name").validate({
ignore: [],
onkeyup: false,
rules: {
},
highlight:false,
});
This is working for me.
jQuery("#form_name").validate().settings.ignore = "";
The validation was working for me on form submission, but it wasn't doing the reactive event driven validation on input to the chosen select lists.
To fix this I added the following to manually trigger the jquery validation event that gets added by the library:
$(".chosen-select").each(function() {
$(this).chosen().on("change", function() {
$(this).parents(".form-group").find("select.form-control").trigger("focusout.validate");
});
});
jquery.validate will now add the .valid class to the underlying select list.
Caveat: This does require a consistent html pattern for your form inputs. In my case, each input filed is wrapped in a div.form-group, and each input has .form-control.
Just find the text ignore: ":hidden" in your jquery validation file and comment it.
After comment this it will never loss any hidden elements to validate...
Thanks
I'm requesting an ASP.net MVC view into a live box and the view contains form fields that have been marked up with attributes to be used by JQuery's unobtrusive validators plug-in.
The client script is not however working and my theory is that its because the validation framework is only being triggered on page load which has long since passed by the time the MVC view has been loaded into the live box.
Thus how can I let the validation framework know that it has new form fields to fix up?
Cheers, Ian.
var $form = $("form");
$form.unbind();
$form.data("validator", null);
$.validator.unobtrusive.parse(document);
// Re add validation with changes
$form.validate($form.data("unobtrusiveValidation").options);
You may take a look at the following blog post. And here's another one.
Another option, rather trick, which worked for me. Just add following line in the beginning of the partial view which is being returned by ajax call
this.ViewContext.FormContext = new FormContext();
Reference
For some reason I had to combine bjan and dfortun's answers...
So I put this in my view:
#{
this.ViewContext.FormContext = new FormContext();
}
And this execute this after the ajax call finishes:
var form = $("#EnrollmentForm");
form.unbind();
form.data("validator", null);
$.validator.unobtrusive.parse(document);
form.validate(form.data("unobtrusiveValidation").options);
I had a similar issue. I had a form that was using Ajax requests to re-display a part of the form with different form fields. I used unobtrusive validation by manually doing it on the client side using the
#Html.TextBoxFor
for my text boxes. For some reason the validation works when attempting to submit with invalid fields (i.e., the text boxes get outlined in red and the appropriate error messages display with the content I put in the
data_val_required
attribute, for example.
However, after I click a button that makes an Ajax request to modify the form with different fields and then submit again, only the red outline on the invalid fields display, but no error messages are rendered.
bjan's trick worked for me, but I still can't see what was causing the issue. All the HTML necessary to carry out the client-side validation was there I just can't figure out why the error message attribute values wouldn't display.
All I can think of is that the jQuery validation code doesn't make a second attempt to check the form fields after a submit was made.
I have a HTML form and within that form I have a DropDownList and a Button that can post to my action method. I want to disable the validation when the post is made by my DropDownList and enable it when it is made by the button.
In my action method I can differentiate, which one is making the post but I can not disable the validation.
I tried to set ValidateRequest = false but it didn't work. I don't want to use Ajax call at this stage.
Thank you
Try this:
Html.DropDownList(..., ..., new { disableValidation = "true" })