ajaxValidation and error field highlighting

Yii 1.1 General Discussion
1

I have a field called ‘Date of Birth’ in my form. So that I can help the user enter their date of birth, I created 3 ‘virtual’ fields for the user to select their date of birth from, as follows:


<div class="row">

	<?php echo $form->labelEx($model, 'date_of_birth'); ?>

	<?php echo $form->dropDownList($model, 'dob_day', $model->DobDayOptions, array('prompt'=>'Day')); ?>

	<?php echo $form->dropDownList($model, 'dob_month', $model->DobMonthOptions, array('prompt'=>'Month')); ?>

	<?php echo $form->dropDownList($model, 'dob_year', $model->DobYearOptions, array('prompt'=>'Year')); ?>

	<?php echo $form->error($model, 'date_of_birth'); ?>

</div>

As you can see, I retain the ‘label’ and ‘error’ functions of the original field.

In my model I have the following:


array('date_of_birth', 'type', 'type'=>'date', 'dateFormat'=>'yyyy-MM-dd', 'message'=>'{attribute} is invalid or incomplete.'),



public function beforeValidate()

{

	if(!empty($this->dob_day) || !empty($this->dob_month) || !empty($this->dob_year))

	{

		$this->date_of_birth=$this->dob_year."-".$this->dob_month."-".$this->dob_day;

	}

		

	return parent::beforeValidate();

}



public function afterValidate()

{

	if($this->hasErrors('date_of_birth'))

	{

		$this->addError('dob_day', '');

		$this->addError('dob_month', '');

		$this->addError('dob_year', '');

	}

		

	return parent::afterValidate();

}

So, just to explain the above:

  1. I specify a rule for ‘date_of_birth’ - to say that it must be in the format ‘yyyy-MM-dd’ - this is how MySQL will store the date.

  2. In beforeValidate I say that if ANY of those 3 virtual fields have been filled in then we assign a value to ‘date_of_birth’ so that it can be validated.

  3. Upon validation if there are any errors with ‘date_of_birth’ then we add an error to the three virtual fields.

In non-ajax validate mode this all works as expected. However when I change to ajaxValidation, the following occurs:

  1. The ‘date_of_birth’ label is not highlighted in red

  2. The 3 virtual fields are not highlighted in red

  3. The correct error message is however displayed

What seems to be happening is that the field’s container div is not getting the “error” class appended to it.

2

I think I have solved this by adding:


<?php echo $form->hiddenField($model, 'date_of_birth');

in to the form. It seems that it needs an actual input for that field for it to apply the error class to its container.

3

if you use beforeValidate Function you have to setup this three objects as safe values




'dob_day,dob_month,dob_year'
4

Yes, I already set them as safe values. As I say this works fine in non-ajax validate mode.