Zend form multiselect repopulate after validation error

Question

Hello, I have a Zend form multiselect element which I am creating like this

$this->addElement('multiselect','somedates',array(
    'filters'=>array('StringTrim'),
    'required'=>true,
    'label'=>'Dates',
    'style' => 'width:14em',
    'size'=>'4',
    'RegisterInArrayValidator' => false, //otherwise it gives an error
    ));

then I add some multi options into the multi-select dynamically through JavaScript into the multi-select (basically a YUI calendar where a user clicks on a date and that gets into multi-select as an option)

Everything works fine if I give all the required values to the form and it passes the isValid test however, if there is an error, every other element gets repopulated with whatever was submitted but multi-select looses all it's options and has to be re-populated by the user itself. Multi-select appears to be going fine as this is what i get if I var dump $this->getRequest()->getQuery(); this is what I get ["somedates"]=> array(2) { [0]=> string(10) "2010-09-09" [1]=> string(10) "2010-09-10" }

I am just wondering if anybody else had the same experience and know what is going wrong over here or if the Zend Framework is capabale of repopulating the multi-selects.

Answer 1

The problem is that ZF expects the user to select one of the options that you populated the ZF MultiSelect with. When you add an option using Javascript, ZF does not know that this is now a valid option so the validation will fail. To get around this you need remove the InArray validator

$this->getElement("somedates")->removeDecorator("InArray");

As for populating the array again, you need to save these somewhere once the user adds them, so if the form fails ZF can add them back in again. You could append these to a hidden field, when the form is submitted check this hidden field for values and add these dates back into the MultiSelect input.

Make sure you validate the input from the hidden field, do not assume that is does contain a correct date.