Thread: How can I get just 1 error message for EmailAddress validator instead of multiple?

emailAddress validator has 7 message teplates;

[PHP]
class Zend_Validate_EmailAddress extends Zend_Validate_Abstract
{
const INVALID = 'emailAddressInvalid';
const INVALID_HOSTNAME = 'emailAddressInvalidHostname';
const INVALID_MX_RECORD = 'emailAddressInvalidMxRecord';
const DOT_ATOM = 'emailAddressDotAtom';
const QUOTED_STRING = 'emailAddressQuotedString';
const INVALID_LOCAL_PART = 'emailAddressInvalidLocalPart';
const LENGTH_EXCEEDED = 'emailAddressLengthExceeded';

protected $_messageTemplates = array(
self::INVALID => "'%value%' is not a valid email address in the basic format local-part@hostname",
self::INVALID_HOSTNAME => "'%hostname%' is not a valid hostname for email address '%value%'",
self::INVALID_MX_RECORD => "'%hostname%' does not appear to have a valid MX record for the email address '%value%'",
self:OT_ATOM => "'%localPart%' not matched against dot-atom format",
self::QUOTED_STRING => "'%localPart%' not matched against quoted-string format",
self::INVALID_LOCAL_PART => "'%localPart%' is not a valid local part for email address '%value%'",
self::LENGTH_EXCEEDED => "'%value%' exceeds the allowed length"
);

...
}
[/PHP]

so you have to specify which message to display. For example if you want to display only INVALID_HOSTNAME, LENGTH_EXCEEDED and DOT_ATOM messages but disable LENGTH_EXCEEDED and DOT_ATOM messages if INVALID_HOSTNAME occurs then you have to do like this;
[PHP]
$element->addValidator('EmailAddress', true, array('messages' => array(
'emailAddressInvalidHostname' => 'hostname is
invalid!')))
$element->addValidator('EmailAddress', false, array('messages' => array(
'emailAddressLengthExceeded' => 'length is too long!',
'emailAddressDotAtom' => 'dot problem!')))
[/PHP]

i did not try this but it seems to work

Hi, thank you for your response. I tried to do as you said, but it is still displaying more than 1 error message. Here is the code snippet:

// add text element
$this->addElement('text', 'email', array(
'label' => 'Email',
'description' => 'Please enter valid email',
'required' => true,
'filters' => array('StringTrim')
));
$this->getElement('email')
->addValidator('EmailAddress', true, array(
'messages' => array('emailAddressInvalidHostname' => 'hostname is invalid!')
))
->addValidator('EmailAddress', false, array(
'messages' => array('emailAddressLengthExceeded' => 'length is too long!', 'emailAddressDotAtom' => 'dot problem!')
));


After searching around the forums I think the best way would be to Extend Zend_Validate_EmailAddress:

class My_Validate_CustomEmailAddress extends Zend_Validate_EmailAddress
{
public function getMessages() {
$this->_messages = array("This is not a valid e-mail address.");
return $this->_messages;
//OR JUST return array("This is not a valid e-mail address.");
}
}

The second parameter "breakChainOnFailure" is not for setting is a error message is being displayed or not.

And it's also not to set if it breaks on the first message.

This parameter defines that no further validator will be processed when set to true.

So when you have a chain like
emailValidator->passwortValidator
the passwordValidator would not be processed when email validates to false.

Originally Posted by thomas

This parameter defines that no further validator will be processed when set to true.

Hi,
You are correct that no further validator(s) will be processed when breakchainonfailure is set to true. Unfortunately, that doesn't help me solve the problem of getting just 1 error message from the EmailAddress validator instead of possibly multiple error messages.

What I ultimately wanted was to get the error messages and render only the very first error message. However, after taking a look at Zend/Validate/EmailAddress.php's isValid() method, I don't think this is possible. However, I did find that it is possible to subclass Zend/Validate/EmailAddress.php and overwrite getMessages() method so that only 1 error message will be displayed when EmailAddress validation fails:

Code:

<?php
class My_Validate_EmailAddress extends Zend_Validate_EmailAddress
{
	public function getMessages() {
		$this->_messages = array("This is not a valid e-mail address.");
		return $this->_messages;
		/* OR SIMPLY
		return array("This is not a valid e-mail address.");
		*/
	}
}

Hello,

Could anyone solve this yet without hacks? This seems so weird that the most typical usage of Email validator is not implemented. I'm new to ZF... maybe anyone knows if new versions support that? I've searched the web for a couple of hours and still don't see an answer. Don't you guys use email validation??

I'm about to finish with regexp validation for this.

Thanks!

Use the validator's setMessage() method.

Originally Posted by jweber

Use the validator's setMessage() method.

This does not work. I found the solution - "addErrorMessage()". This replaces all error messages with just one.
It is however adding another problem as I wanted to have 2 messages - one if email is empty "Please input your email" and one if email is incorrect "Your email address is incorrect".

[PHP]
$email = new Zend_Form_Element_Text('email');
$email->setLabel('Email')
->setRequired(true)
->addFilter('stringtrim')
->addValidator('emailAddress', true)->addErrorMessage('Your email address is invalid');
$this->addElement($email);
[/PHP]

You can get what you want by setting individual error messages by failure condition. You might end up actually specifying more than two error types, but if you set them all to have one of two messages, then from the users perspective, there will only be two.

Take a look at THIS THREAD for more info.

Yell out if you need more specific help.

Cheers

Indeed there is not any way to set the number of the messages per validator and the only way is to extend the validator's class, personally instead of setting the message in getMessages() method I prefer to do something like the following in order to get only the first validation error.

Code:

<?php
class My_Validator_EmailCheck extends Zend_Validate_EmailAddress {
	public function getMessages() {
		$messages = array_values($this->_messages);
		return (array)$messages[0]; //Return only the first error for each time
	}
}