highlighting fields with s:validateForm

[teacurran]

Is it possible to use s:validateForm and have it highlight the problematic fields?

It was highlighting only a single field for us, and when I updated to 3.0.2 it now highlights all fields in the view if there is an error.  I want to programmatically control which fields get highlighted.

It also only displays the first error I put into the arrayList. I feel like it should display all errors generated. This is less of a problem for me though.

This is my class:

@FacesValidator( "patientSearchValidator" )
public class PatientSearchValidator
     implements Validator {

     @Inject
     private InputElement< String > fieldFirstName;

     @Inject
     private InputElement< String > fieldLastName;

     @Inject
     private InputElement< String > fieldEmail;

     @Inject
     private InputElement< String > fieldState;

     @Inject
     private InputElement< String > fieldZipCode;

     @Inject
     Messages messages;

     @Override
     public void validate(
          final FacesContext facesContext,
          final UIComponent uiComponent,
          final Object values )
          throws ValidatorException {

          final ArrayList< FacesMessage > errors = new ArrayList< FacesMessage >();

          fieldFirstName.getComponent().setValid( true );
          fieldLastName.getComponent().setValid( true );
          fieldState.getComponent().setValid( true );
          fieldZipCode.getComponent().setValid( true );

          if ( StringUtils.isEmpty( this.fieldState.getValue() )
               && StringUtils.isEmpty( this.fieldZipCode.getValue() ) ) {

               fieldState.getComponent().setValid( false );
               fieldZipCode.getComponent().setValid( false );

               errors.add( this.createError( "Either State or Zip code is required" ) );
          }

          if ( StringUtils.isEmpty( this.fieldFirstName.getValue() )
               && StringUtils.isEmpty( this.fieldLastName.getValue() ) ) {

               fieldFirstName.getComponent().setValid( false );
               fieldLastName.getComponent().setValid( false );

               errors.add( this.createError( "Either First Name or Last Name is required" ) );
          }

          if ( !StringUtils.isEmpty( this.fieldZipCode.getValue() ) ) {
               if ( !this.fieldZipCode.getValue().matches( Constants.REGEX_ZIP_CODE ) ) {

                    fieldZipCode.getComponent().setValid( false );

                    errors.add( this.createError( "Zip Code entered is invalid" ) );
               }
          }

          if ( errors.size() > 0 ) {
               throw new ValidatorException( errors );
          }
     }

     public FacesMessage createError(
          final String value ) {

          final FacesMessage message = new FacesMessage();
          message.setDetail( value );
          message.setSummary( value );
          message.setSeverity( FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR );
          return message;
     }
}

[teacurran]

For anyone reading this who is trying to do the same thing. The trick to getting this working was to never throw an exception.  Instead of creating a FacesMessage, you just have to do something like:
messages.error("Zip Code entered is invalid");

and then don't throw an exception. The existence of the messages.error will invalidate the form and the correct fields will be highlighted.

[komat]

Thanks, not throwing Exceptions helped a lot.

I'm also doing this though:

{code}FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().validationFailed();{code}

According to my tests this is needed to test for validity on the client side in javascript (I use a popup to edit some values of an entity - that popup shouldn't go away until validation succeeded and the values are saved to the database). I'm using some PrimeFaces construct to do this (Link: http://cagataycivici.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/primefaces-ajax-callbacks/ )

Now the really interesting thing is that, according to my firebug, the validity object of the inputText component still holds the value "true" for its "valid" field. That feels wrong, but as I'm not even sure where that comes from, it might be quite what's expected.