Zend_Filter_Input / Zend_Validate Messages

The basic usage of Zend_Filter_Input is:

$filters = array('body' => array('StringTrim' , 'StripTags'));
$validators = array('body' => 'Alpha');
$input = new Zend_Filter_Input($filters, $validators, $_POST);

if ($input->isValid()) {
// do something with form
} else {
// failed validation
$messages = $input->getMessages();
// iterate though $messages to display to user
}

The problem is that the message you get out isn’t always written as you would like. Consider the output if the body record is empty. A dump() of $messages gives this:

array(1) {
  ["body"] => array(1) {
    [0] => string(21) "'' is an empty string"
  }
}

The text isn’t exactly what I would want to display to a user. To change it you pass in a messages parameter to the $validators array:


$filters = array('body' => array('StringTrim' , 'StripTags'));
$validators = array( 'body' => array('Alpha',
'messages'=>array(Zend_Validate_Alpha::STRING_EMPTY=>'The body is empty!')));
$input = new Zend_Filter_Input($filters, $validators, $_POST);


This works as expected. The problem now is that you need to know the “magic constants”, so here is a list of all the constants and the associated default message:

Zend_Validate_Alnum::NOT_ALNUM

‘%value%’ has not only alphabetic and digit characters

Zend_Validate_Alnum::STRING_EMPTY

‘%value%’ is an empty string

Zend_Validate_Alpha::NOT_ALPHA

‘%value%’ has not only alphabetic characters

Zend_Validate_Alpha::STRING_EMPTY

‘%value%’ is an empty string

Zend_Validate_Between::NOT_BETWEEN

‘%value%’ is not between ‘%min%’ and ‘%max%’, inclusively

Zend_Validate_Between::NOT_BETWEEN_STRICT

‘%value%’ is not strictly between ‘%min%’ and ‘%max%’

Zend_Validate_Ccnum::LENGTH

‘%value%’ must contain between 13 and 19 digits

Zend_Validate_Ccnum::CHECKSUM

Luhn algorithm (mod-10 checksum) failed on ‘%value%’

Zend_Validate_Date::NOT_YYYY_MM_DD

‘%value%’ is not of the format YYYY-MM-DD

Zend_Validate_Date::INVALID

‘%value%’ does not appear to be a valid date

Zend_Validate_Digits::NOT_DIGITS

‘%value%’ contains not only digit characters

Zend_Validate_Digits::STRING_EMPTY

‘%value%’ is an empty string

Zend_Validate_EmailAddress::INVALID

‘%value%’ is not a valid email address in the basic format local-part@hostname

Zend_Validate_EmailAddress::INVALID_HOSTNAME

‘%hostname%’ is not a valid hostname for email address ‘%value%’

Zend_Validate_EmailAddress::INVALID_MX_RECORD

‘%hostname%’ does not appear to have a valid MX record for the email address ‘%value%’

Zend_Validate_EmailAddress::DOT_ATOM

‘%localPart%’ not matched against dot-atom format

Zend_Validate_EmailAddress::QUOTED_STRING

‘%localPart%’ not matched against quoted-string format

Zend_Validate_EmailAddress::INVALID_LOCAL_PART

‘%localPart%’ is not a valid local part for email address ‘%value%’

Zend_Validate_Float::NOT_FLOAT

‘%value%’ does not appear to be a float

Zend_Validate_GreaterThan::NOT_GREATER

‘%value%’ is not greater than ‘%min%’

Zend_Validate_Hex::NOT_HEX

‘%value%’ has not only hexadecimal digit characters

Zend_Validate_Hostname::IP_ADDRESS_NOT_ALLOWED

‘%value%’ appears to be an IP address, but IP addresses are not allowed

Zend_Validate_Hostname::UNKNOWN_TLD

‘%value%’ appears to be a DNS hostname but cannot match TLD against known list

Zend_Validate_Hostname::INVALID_DASH

‘%value%’ appears to be a DNS hostname but contains a dash (-) in an invalid position

Zend_Validate_Hostname::INVALID_HOSTNAME_SCHEMA

‘%value%’ appears to be a DNS hostname but cannot match against hostname schema for TLD ‘%tld%’

Zend_Validate_Hostname::UNDECIPHERABLE_TLD

‘%value%’ appears to be a DNS hostname but cannot extract TLD part

Zend_Validate_Hostname::INVALID_HOSTNAME

‘%value%’ does not match the expected structure for a DNS hostname

Zend_Validate_Hostname::INVALID_LOCAL_NAME

‘%value%’ does not appear to be a valid local network name

Zend_Validate_Hostname::LOCAL_NAME_NOT_ALLOWED

‘%value%’ appears to be a local network name but but local network names are not allowed

Zend_Validate_InArray::NOT_IN_ARRAY

‘%value%’ was not found in the haystack

Zend_Validate_Int::NOT_INT

‘%value%’ does not appear to be an integer

Zend_Validate_Ip::NOT_IP_ADDRESS

‘%value%’ does not appear to be a valid IP address

Zend_Validate_LessThan::NOT_LESS

‘%value%’ is not less than ‘%max%’

Zend_Validate_NotEmpty::IS_EMPTY

Value is empty, but a non-empty value is required

Zend_Validate_Regex::NOT_MATCH

‘%value%’ does not match against pattern ‘%pattern%’

Zend_Validate_StringLength::TOO_SHORT

‘%value%’ is less than %min% characters long

Zend_Validate_StringLength::TOO_LONG

‘%value%’ is greater than %max% characters long

Finally, you can also change the generic “not empty” and “missing” messages in Zend_Filter_Input using:


$options = array(
'notEmptyMessage' => "A non-empty value is required for field '%field%'",
'missingMessage' => "Field '%field%' is required"
);
$filters = array('body' => array('StringTrim' , 'StripTags'));
$validators = array('body' => 'Alpha');
$input = new Zend_Filter_Input($filters, $validators, $_POST);
$input->setOptions($options);


Now you can fix those messages to say something useful and your users will thank you for it!