Symfony2 form not validating required fields

Question

I have a Symfony2 form that has required fields, which works fine in most browsers as the "required" attribute is on the inputs and so the user is unable to submit the form without filling in the field.

However, for the browsers that don't support the "required" attribute the form is submitted. This is causing a problem because when the form's isValid() function is called it returns true even though the required fields are empty.

Is this normal behaviour? I would assume there would be some server side checking of required fields during the form's handleRequest function but it doesn't seem to have any. If not is there a way to enable this?

Remember, anyone can inpect the DOM and remove the required attribute, this is why you shouldn't rely on it alone. Add a constraint to your form element to ensure it is there. E.g. Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\NotBlank — Rooneyl
– Rooneyl, Commented Feb 7, 2017 at 11:54

KhorneHoly · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-07 11:55:36Z

5

You either need to check those things manually or you need to define validation constraints in your entity, to enable automatic validation.

If Symfony doesn't now what to check, it can do the validation.

Here's an example from the documentation linked above.

// src/AppBundle/Entity/Author.php

// ...
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;

class Author
{
    /**
     * @Assert\NotBlank()
     */
    public $name;
}

With this Constraint you're telling Symfony, that the name field mustn't be empty. So if the field will be submitted empty, the form validation will fail.

Never trust client side validation, since those can be modified and invalidated easily

answered Feb 7, 2017 at 11:55

KhorneHoly

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6 Comments

dk80 Over a year ago

Thanks, that worked. I would have assumed the Form object would perform the validation on both front end and back end (especially when calling isValid), it seems a bit silly having to define the same validation in two separate places. If the Form only performs front end validation then it's pretty useless as you can't rely on it and have to re-check everything on the backend. But I can't complain as it's working now :)

KhorneHoly Over a year ago

The required field is just an option for the view of the form, but not for the data that lies behind the form. That's why this only affects the view, but not the server side validation.

Dan Costinel Over a year ago

As I'm aware, the recommendation is not to use anymore the Assert annotation (even though the official documentation encourages it). The fix is to import the respective validation class (like NotBlank), and then just /** *@NotBlank() */ above the property name. Not a big deal though, I guess...

KhorneHoly Over a year ago

@DanCostinel thank you for that information, I didn't know about that yet.

Dan Costinel Over a year ago

np. see this presentation for more info.

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