jQuery validation: change default error message

Question

Is there a simple way to change the default error values in the jQuery validation plugin?

I just want to rewrite the error messages to be more personal to my app--I have a lot of fields, so I don't want to set the message individually for field x...I know I can do that!

Answer 1

Another possible solution is to loop over the fields, adding the same error message to each field.

$('.required').each(function(index) {
  $(this).rules("add", {
    messages: {
      required: "Custom error message."
   }
  });
});

Answer 2

You can specify your own messages in the validate call. Lifting and abbreviating this code from the Remember the Milk signup form used in the Validation plugin documentation (http://jquery.bassistance.de/validate/demo/milk/), you can easily specify your own messages:

var validator = $("#signupform").validate({
    rules: {
        firstname: "required",
        lastname: "required",
        username: {
            required: true,
            minlength: 2,
            remote: "users.php"
        }
    },
    messages: {
        firstname: "Enter your firstname",
        lastname: "Enter your lastname",
        username: {
            required: "Enter a username",
            minlength: jQuery.format("Enter at least {0} characters"),
            remote: jQuery.format("{0} is already in use")
        }
    }
}

The complete API for validate(...) : http://jqueryvalidation.org/validate

Answer 3

Add this code in a separate file/script included after the validation plugin to override the messages, edit at will :)

jQuery.extend(jQuery.validator.messages, {
    required: "This field is required.",
    remote: "Please fix this field.",
    email: "Please enter a valid email address.",
    url: "Please enter a valid URL.",
    date: "Please enter a valid date.",
    dateISO: "Please enter a valid date (ISO).",
    number: "Please enter a valid number.",
    digits: "Please enter only digits.",
    creditcard: "Please enter a valid credit card number.",
    equalTo: "Please enter the same value again.",
    accept: "Please enter a value with a valid extension.",
    maxlength: jQuery.validator.format("Please enter no more than {0} characters."),
    minlength: jQuery.validator.format("Please enter at least {0} characters."),
    rangelength: jQuery.validator.format("Please enter a value between {0} and {1} characters long."),
    range: jQuery.validator.format("Please enter a value between {0} and {1}."),
    max: jQuery.validator.format("Please enter a value less than or equal to {0}."),
    min: jQuery.validator.format("Please enter a value greater than or equal to {0}.")
});

Answer 4

Since we're already using JQuery, we can let page designers add custom messages to the markup rather than the code:

<input ... data-msg-required="my message" ...

Or, a more general solution using a single short data-msg attribute on all fields:

<form id="form1">
    <input type="text" id="firstName" name="firstName" 
        data-msg="Please enter your first name" />
    <br />
    <input type="text" id="lastName" name="lastName" 
        data-msg="Please enter your last name" />
    <br />
    <input type="submit" />
</form>

And the code then contains something like this:

function getMsg(selector) {
    return $(selector).attr('data-msg');
}

$('#form1').validate({
    // ...
    messages: {
        firstName: getMsg('#firstName'),
        lastName: getMsg('#lastName')
    }
    // ...
});

Answer 5

This worked for me:

$.validator.messages.required = 'required';

Answer 6

Instead of changing the plugin source code you can include an additional js file in the format like those in the downloads localization folder and include that one after loading the validation.js

jQuery.extend(jQuery.validator.messages, {
    required: ...,
    maxlength: jQuery.validator.format(...),
    ...
});