Error Reporting

[Reformed]

I was wondering what other people think about form validation error reporting. It seems to me that there are two ways to do it: 1) report back to the same page the user enters input on (very complex) or 2) create a seperate error page with a history.back() javascript function (the easy way).

What do other prefer? They both have advantages and dissadvantages.

[laserlight]

Report the error on the page itself.

It isnt very complex, unless you design it as such.

[LordShryku]

Personally, I use a two step validation process. The first is all javascript, which I use an onsubmit trigger to validate the input and not submit the form if there's an error, notify the user with alert. In the case that the user has javascript turned off, I have the same validation done on the page that the form is sent to, using php. If an error is found, I header redirect back to the form, with a get variable to tell the form what the error was.

[Reformed]

What I hate most about using the same page (which is what I do as well) is having to figure out ways to save the user's data when the page is reloaded. That's the biggest headache with using the same page.

[LordShryku]

That's true. Tis why the javascript is so handy. A couple of the sites, I'll set it as a session var and pull it back into the page. Considering most of my stuff is intranet at work, I know the infastructure, and all machines should have javascript enabled. So most of that stuff, I say if they turned off javascript, well, it's their fault. They can enter it again. I'm such a bastard 😃

[Reformed]

I wish we could just rely on javascript for validation. Life would be so much easier.