jQuery Validation Plugin page

Plugins/Validation

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CONTENTS

• 1 Validate forms like you've never been validating before!
• 2 Example
  • 2.1 Isn't that nice and easy?
  • 2.2 A few things to look for when playing around with the demo
• 3 API Documentation
  • 3.1 Options for the validate() method
  • 3.2 Plugin methods
  • 3.3 Custom selectors
  • 3.4 Utilities
  • 3.5 Validator
  • 3.6 List of built-in Validation methods
• 4 General Guidelines
  • 4.1 Fields with complex names (brackets, dots)
  • 4.2 Too much recursion
• 5 Demos
  • 5.1 The Marketo sign-up form
    • 5.1.1 The Marketo sign-up form, step 2
  • 5.2 The Remember The Milk sign-up form
  • 5.3 A multipart "buy&sell a house" form
  • 5.4 Using remote validation to help with captchas
• 6 Featured Sites using the plugin

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VALIDATE FORMS LIKE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN VALIDATING BEFORE!

"But doesn't jQuery make it so very easy to write your own validation plugin?" Sure, but there still are a lot of subtleties that you have to worry about: You need a standard library of validation methods (think of emails, URLs, credit card numbers). You need to place error messages in the DOM and show and hide them when appropriate. You want to react to more than just a submit event, like keyup and blur. You may need different ways to specify validation rules, based on the server-side enviroment you are using on different projects. And after all, you don't want to reinvent the wheel, do you?

"But aren't there already a ton of validation plugins out there?" Right, there are a lot of non-jQuery-based solutions (which you'd avoid since you found jQuery) and some jQuery-based solutions. This particular one you are looking at is one of the oldest jQuery plugins (started in July 2006) and proved itself in projects all around the world. There is also an article discussing how this plugin fits the bill of the should-be validation solution.

Not convinced? Have a look at this example: