I'm new to ZF and I'm discovering how to use Zend_Form and utilize it's capability like validating and filtering input values. I already know the basic of Zend_form like building a form and add element into it. My problem is that I want to add a custom error message to form element and I want to define that message inside the action controller that instantiated the form. I want to defined the error message inside the controller because I need to perform a validation against the database. For example checking if the username/email already exist in the database. I tried googling and that's leads me to setErrorMessage method of zend_form but when I try to use it, the error message is not showing at all... I also tried zend_form->setError and still no error displaying in the view script. Is my idea of setting custom error in the action controller correct or this should be done the other way?