These forums are now Read Only. If you have an Acrobat question, ask questions and get help from one of our experts.

Field Pattern Validation

Forum Index > JavaScript > Field Pattern Validation
2007-07-02 18:53:03
Alzeric
Registered: Jul 2 2007
Posts: 4

Apparently I'm not getting the field validation examples in the Help (F1) of Livecycle. I've been struggling to get all the fields in a collection to validate properly. Once I add a Document Signature field to the document and assign the fields to a collection, it doesn't seem to like the default validation settings if I assign the fields to 'User Input: Required' So for the name field I've tried multiple validation patterns all to no avail. My question is how to write a custom validation pattern that allows for an unknown ammount of characters in a name, email..etc. I've tried A A which only validates if the user enters J D for example but John Doe does not work. I've tried other combinations but nothing works. Any help would be appreciated.
 
Thank you

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 8.0999999999999996447286321199499070644378662109375, Windows
Top
2007-07-06 10:19:55
#1
thomp
Expert
Registered: Feb 15 2006
Posts: 4411
There are a couple of things you need to look at. First, is the Acrobat Picture Clause Reference. You can find it and other LiveCycle references on this site

[url=http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/xml/index_arch.php]http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/xml/index_arch.php[/url]

The other thing to look at is using a JavaScript validation script with a Regular Expression. Regular Expressions are much more flexible that the picture clause at doing validation.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
www.pdfscripting.com
Very Important - How to Debug Your Script

Top
2007-07-08 22:18:18
#2
Alzeric
Registered: Jul 2 2007
Posts: 4
After reading through the Picture Clause Reference I'm certain there is no way to validate the customer name field without first knowing how many characters will be entered in. And I'm pretty sure there is no simple way of just making it "required" without a pattern to verify against.

The Document Signature Field acts pretty weird if the text field is 'required' and there is nothing to validate it against. Which all in all I just want to make sure it is filled out. Customer Name field (First and Last name) one text field.

So I tried the regular expression route, and added it to the 'Validate' section of the text field. Still I think the problem lies in the way the Document Signature field processes the 'required' fields.

Now I noticed that this only happens if I set the document signature field to lock the required fields after digitally signing the document. This is a mandatory feature the document needs to have, along with the document signature. And the custom stamp option is not a viable solution to this either, since in my field of work everything is questioned whether or not it was altered or forged in some manner. And Custom 'Forged' stamps would not be too difficult to recreate, so that idea is out of the window.

I'm stumped on this and any suggetions as to what route to take would be greatly appreciated. I can not release a document to the customers with validation error messages popping up even though the fields are filled out. Just wouldn't be professional, and down right annoying considering it validates about 15 fields, and everyone except the date and time fields generates an error message.

Thank you,
Top