JQuery Validate Plugin: make input required depending on radio button value

Question

Hi all,

I'm having a real headache trying to get the jQuery Validate plugin to work.

I have a form, the first question asking the user to select an option from a radio group. This shows further questions below, depending on their selection.

What I'm trying to achieve is making the visible questions required, but obviously depending on what the user chose at the first question - ie. if the question isn't visible then don't require it.

The form can be seen here: http://planner.adamturtle.com/index.php?id=cab11f902671b3c2d6&page=2

All the javascript code is embedded on the page.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

jQuery validate plugin allows you to add a custom validation methods and you may want to try those. Inside this method you can check when is the value of the radio box and check other field values based on that information.

The method to add a custom validation is called addMethod (docs link here).

Answer 2

To gather visible elements:

$currentInputs = $("input:visible");

What I would do for readability purposes is assign all "active" inputs to be validated with a class like "validateMe":

$currentInputs = $("input.validateMe");
$result = $currentInputs.validate();