From my time working with Ruby On rails, there is a couple different packaged/projects out there to manage both validation and error reporting in an extensible way.
Self-studying Python Pylons I just got introduced to HTMLFill which so far seems like an elegant solution to a common task of form validation.
I know both examples are features of Frameworks, or in the case of HTMLFill, intended to be part of a framework... still I don't remember seeing anything remotely as well polished in cakephp, code igniter, or even Zend framework. Am I missing something out there, or would it be worth while to attempt to imitate Python's HTMLFill in PHP5?
disclaimers: I've written Ajax based form validation systems that rely on embedding metadata like class="data-required data-email" and like but they've always seemed clunky to me.
I believe in the fat model philosophy of data validation, with the HTMLFill example above, I plan on packing my models with common HTMLFill schemes to each model, as is possible.
Links: HTMLFill - http://www.formencode.org/htmlfill.html#introduction