I think it should be possible to validate it in the controller, but at the moment I don’t see how (it is quite some time since I used this validation approach the last time).

HTH

i can’t figure out how to use this if i am trying to “validate” form data in my controller though. it was mentioned above but it doesn’t make sense to this newbie.

e.g. i have 2 checkboxes where one has to be checked. if both are checked or not checked i want to use showmessage to draw attention to it. is that possible? how can i do that in the controller?

thanks again for your work on this validation solution!

First of all, thanks, Daniel, for this blog, which was and still is very usefull to me

I use the validation approach you described in this post with Cake 1.1

I know you posted it a long time ago now but I have a little complement to suggest

I needed in many models to valid fields with “isMyFieldUnique” functions

with your solution you have to put one method per field in every model

here is my solution to use a “isUnique” method in AppModel and how to pass it an array of arguments

in AppModel, function isUnique :

function isUnique($params) {
$fieldName = $params[0];
if ($this->{$this->primaryKey} == null) // add
return (!$this->hasAny(array($this->name.’.’.$fieldName => $this->data[$this->name][$fieldName])));
else // edit
return (!$this->hasAny(array($this->name.’.’.$fieldName => $this->data[$this->name][$fieldName], $this->name.’.’.$this->primaryKey => ‘!=’.$this->data[$this->name][$this->primaryKey])));
}

in AppModel, lines to modify in your invalidFields function :

[...]
if (isset($validator[0])) {
if (is_array($validator[0])) {
$function_name = $validator[0][0];
$params = $validator[0][1];

if (method_exists($this, $function_name)) {
if (isset($data[$table][$field_name])
and !call_user_func(array($this, $function_name), $params)) {
if (!isset($errors[$field_name])) {
$errors[$field_name] = isset ($validator[1]) ? $validator[1] : 1;
}
}
}
} else {
if (isset ($data[$table][$field_name]) && !preg_match($validator[0], $data[$table][$field_name])) {
if (!isset ($errors[$field_name])) {
$errors[$field_name] = isset ($validator[1]) ? $validator[1] : 1;
}
}
}
}
[...]

using it in your model :

var $validate = array (
‘my_field’ => array (
array (VALID_NOT_EMPTY, ‘Please enter something.’),
array (array(‘isUnique’, array(‘my_field’)), ‘This name is already used.’)
)
);

$validator[0] has to be an array if you wanna call a callback function
first element : function name
second element : parameters array (can be empty or be of the size you need, dun care)

hope this comment could be usefull for even one person ^^

The Validation-Errors issue.

It basically returns only the number of validation errors.

I have a form where data from an associated model must also be validated. Let’s say hypothetically I had a model called Post and another model called Comment. For the sake of this example I have one form that allows me to create a post and comment at the same time.

So input fields would have something like Post/name and Comment/name … etc.

The Post and Comment models has it’s respective validations. When I print out the $errors variable in the App_Model class it will show errors for both if they don’t validate. However, the errors helper doesn’t print any errors for the associated model.