Displaying Form Error Messages from Array

Question

I wanted to incorporate GUMP https://github.com/Wixel/GUMP into my site for server side validation. But unfortunately the documentation is light and I am new to PHP.

Here is my validation code:

//Validation
$gump = new GUMP(); 
$rules = array(
    'dept'     => 'required|numeric',
    'hosp'     => 'required|numeric',
    'subhosp'  => 'required|numeric',
    'user'     => 'required|numeric',
    'gpo'      => 'required|boolean|exact_len,1',
    'clin'     => 'required|valid_name',
    'clinmail' => 'required|valid_email',
    'comp'     => 'required|alpha_dash',
    'cpt'      => 'required|alpha_dash',
    'past'     => 'required|boolean|exact_len,1',
    'latex'    => 'required|boolean|exact_len,1',   
);
$validated = $gump->validate($_POST,$rules);
print_r($validated); // Something went wrong

The output from the above code gives me an array like so when I am looking at my AJAX response in FireBug:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [field] => clin
            [value] => .-0
            [rule] => validate_valid_name
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [field] => clinmail
            [value] => %$sd
            [rule] => validate_valid_email
        )

)

And I what I need is something like so:

<div class="error-msg">You did not enter a valid email address</div><br>
<div class="error-msg">You did not enter a valid username</div><br>

From the documentation I get:

    if($validated === TRUE)
{
    // Do something, everything went well
}
else
{   
    // This is where I am stuck. Do I have to loop through and put my <div> tags here?
}

My question is how would the community handle outputting error messages with this class? My only thought is that I loop through the results above and output different messages depending on the field and the rule that was broken but that seems tedious. Is there a better way or a better class to use that does standalone PHP input validation? I was using another very easy to use class but it started breaking when I moved away from inline PHP to AJAX.

semsem · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-08 02:03:49Z

4

edit your code to:

$gump = new GUMP(); 
$rules = array(
'dept'     => 'required|numeric',
'hosp'     => 'required|numeric',
'subhosp'  => 'required|numeric',
'user'     => 'required|numeric',
'gpo'      => 'required|boolean|exact_len,1',
'clin'     => 'required|valid_name',
'clinmail' => 'required|valid_email',
'comp'     => 'required|alpha_dash',
'cpt'      => 'required|alpha_dash',
'past'     => 'required|boolean|exact_len,1',
'latex'    => 'required|boolean|exact_len,1',   
);

$error_texts = array(
'dept'     => 'You must enter a numeric value',
'hosp'     => 'You must enter a numeric value',
'subhosp'  => 'You must enter a numeric value',
'user'     => 'You must enter a numeric value',
'gpo'      => 'You must enter a boolean value',
'clin'     => 'You must enter a valid name',
'clinmail' => 'You must enter a valid email',
'comp'     => 'You must enter a valid alpha dash',
'cpt'      => 'You must enter a valid alpha dash',
'past'     => 'You must enter 1 char',
'latex'    => 'You must enter 1 char',
);

$validated = $gump->validate($_POST,$rules);

if($validated === TRUE)
{
   echo "Every thing is ok";
}
else
{
    foreach($validated as $key=>$error)
    {
        echo '<div class="error-msg">' . $error_texts["{$error['field']}"] . '</div><br />';
    }
}

edited May 8, 2012 at 2:03

answered May 7, 2012 at 23:59

semsem

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2 Comments

Dev Newb Over a year ago

I really appreciate the response and if I have to I will go this route but to keep it simple for me I'm looking for an answer in PHP to echo out the <divs>. I'm not great at PHP but much better than javascript and ajax. I need something in the php script that loops through the arrays and spits out <divs> for each error. All of that sounds terribly complicated so I'm also wondering if there is just a better validation class out there that will work with AJAX forms. All the validation libraries Ive seen need you to submit to the same page, not using ajax to access another php page.

Dev Newb Over a year ago

Thanks alot! I really like what you've done and I'm trying to make it work but there is a problem. No matter what validation fails, the foreach simply delivers the $errortexts in order. So if two validations fail, no matter which ones, the first two error texts are given. Obviously I need the corresponding error message for the validation that fails. Any ideas? Thanks for the help so far. I feel like I"m getting on the right track.

Nikson Kanti Paul · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-12 10:45:53Z

1

I would like to add that if a validation fails twice, for example if a value is required and has to exist out of more than 10 characters then @semsems answer would print multiple lines for the same field.

I changed the above code and added:

$_validated = array();
foreach($validated as $key=>$error)
{
    if ( !in_array($error['field'], $_validated) )
    {
        print '<div class="error-msg">' . $error_texts["{$error['field']}"] . '</div>';
        $_validated[] = $error['field'];
    }
}

edited Jun 12, 2012 at 10:45

Nikson Kanti Paul

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answered Jun 11, 2012 at 22:03

ptitb

563 bronze badges

Comments

ghiscoding · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-01 04:50:19Z

I know this question is a year old and been answered, but since I based myself on the accepted answer and in my view made it a sweet better (completely generic with locale as extra), I thought it would be nice to share and get some feedback... what do you guys think about my code? Now based on semsem's answer... I like the way he coded part of it and I derived from it to come up with the following code:
First I extended GUMP with my own class so I could overwrite some functions

<?php

require("gump.class.php");

class GumpValidator extends GUMP 
{
    private $locale;
    private $translator;

    public function GumpValidator($lang = "en")
    {
        $this->locale = $lang;
        $this->loadValidationLocales();
    }

    /** Overwrite the default validate() function of GUMP so that I can add an extra "message" property */
    public function validate(array $input, array $ruleset) 
    {
        $validated_data = GUMP::validate($input, $ruleset);
        if(is_array($validated_data)) {
            foreach($validated_data as $index=>$error) {
                $validation = str_replace(":attribute",  $error['field'], $this->translator[$error['rule']]);
                $validation = str_replace(":param",  $error['param'], $validation);
                $validated_data[$index++]['message'] = $validation;
            }
        }


        return $validated_data;
    }

    /** Depending on the language locale, load the proper set of validation messages */
    private function loadValidationLocales()
    {
        $this->translator = require "/lang/" . $this->locale . "/validation.php";
        return $this->translator;
    }  
} // EOC

Then as you can see from the extended class, I created myself a set of locale language message for validation and I took the full list of possible validation errors directly from the GUMP code on Github, take a look at the function get_readable_errors() to get the full list of errors. Github link here... The locales which I created are saved under separate language folders /lang/en/validation.php, /lang/fr/validation.php, etc... You can easily create as many as you want... I took the concept from Laravel Framework... These validation.php files looks for example, like this (1 file per language/locale), here is the English one:

<?php

return array(
    "validate_alpha"            => "The :attribute may only contain letters.",
    "validate_alpha_numeric"    => "The :attribute may only contain letters and numbers.",
    .....
);

Then finally in my POST to validate code I just call it like this:

// load my extended class with language locale I want to use
$gump = new GumpValidator("en");

// now validate the data 
$validated_data = $gump->validate( $_POST, $rules );

So at the end I get the extra property of message inside the $validated_data object returned with the option of whichever locale language I chose to display the error message...and voilà!!! In my case I read the code in javascript to display the errors in Bootstrap alert, but if you want PHP you can look at semsem answer as well. So at the end, I know it takes more code since I have an extra class to wrap it and extra locales, but isn't sweet to first have it generic (per validation errors) and second to have multiple locale language easily?

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