Codeigniter form_error() displays only one error - php

Question

I'm running CI form validation and using form_error() to display errors individually for each field. The problem, though, is that the form_error() function only returns the first validation error
Example field:
<input type="text" name="value" value="short">
validation script:
$validationRules = "min_length[6]|numeric";
$this->form_validation->set_rules(
'value',
'lang:mod_the_field',
$validationRules
);
if($this->form_validation->run() === FALSE){
echo form_error('value');
}
The above outputs: <p>The Value field must be at least 5 characters in length.<\/p>
Although the field also fails validation as a numeric value.
I cannot seem to find documentation on this. Is there a simple step I am missing to get all validation errors for a single field output? Is there a better solution than running the validation multiple times, once for each rule?
EDIT:
To be clear, the output I'm looking for in this particular example is:
<p>The Value field must contain only numbers.</p>
<p>The Value field must be at least 5 characters in length.</p>
One solution is to run the validation once for each rule and aggregate the output, but I'm trying to find out if there is a way to do this out of the box in CI?
SOLUTION:
I checked the Form_validation library and found that Samutz' comment is correct. The script breaks out and returns after the first validation error.
rather than extending any classes, I changed my code to iterate over each rule and concatenate the error string like so:
$validationRules = "min_length[6]|numeric";
$validationRules = explode('|', $validationRules);
$errors = '';
foreach($validationRules as $rule){
$this->form_validation->set_rules(
'value',
'lang:mod_the_field',
$rule
);
if($this->form_validation->run() === FALSE){
$errors .= form_error('value');
}
}
$errors = ($errors) ? $errors : FALSE;
echo $errors;

Answer 1

The problem
When testing for errors in a CI form that errors served by validation_errors() in form helper are not exactly what I would call 'accessible'.
Sure they are neat in the way that there's an error message presented for every error (so failing to populate both user name and password when they are required, will display two error messages by default), but this should be taken a step further. I'm talking about error labels, e.g.:
<label for="password">The Password field must be at least 6 characters in length</label>
So users can click on error and get straight to field that needs fixing.
The idea
My first idea was to write a wrapper for form helper or somehow extend the form class. While this seemed as a good solution, a deeper study of validation class usage revealed a quicker fix. By default, rule for password could look like this:
$this->form_validation->set_rules('password', 'Password', 'trim|required|min_length[6]|md5');
Where set_rules() method parameters are as follows:
Password field name attribute (the same which you've defined)
Quoting the manual - A "human" name for this field, which will be inserted into the error message.
Validation rules for password field (in the above example password is required and at least 6 characters long) plus some modifiers (trimming spaces and instant conversion to md5).
A simple solution is to insert a label into second parameter, which will be literally used for displaying the error. It could look like this:
$this->form_validation->set_rules('password', '<label for="password">Password</label>', 'trim|required|min_length[6]|md5');
But why not take it a step further and use form_label() from form helper? That would result in:
$this->form_validation->set_rules('password', form_label('Password', 'password'), 'trim|required|min_length[6]|md5');
As you've probably noticed, the fix will result in a slightly different code that we were aiming at:
The <label for="password">Password</label> field must be at least 6 characters in length
Only the actual field name is wrapped in label tag. But hey - with some simple styles (below) it's not that bad at all. For more organised styles it would be nice to add a custom class to that label, or better yet - wrap the whole error message in some unique container (so you'll be able to specify styles only for that error label) using set_error_delimiters():
$this->form_validation->set_error_delimiters('<div class="form_error">','</div>');
That will result in following html:
<div class="form_error">The <label for="password">Password</label> field must be at least 6 characters in length</div>
Add some styles to that:
.form_error label {color:#F00;text-decoration:underline}
Hope you can do more with form_error() at this point:
// in stylesheet
.form_error label {color:#F00;text-decoration:underline}
// in form controller
$this->form_validation->set_error_delimiters('<div class="form_error">','</div>');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('password', form_label('Password', 'password'), 'trim|required|min_length[6]|md5');

Answer 2

just stumbled upon this myself and found a way around it. It's not really an orthodox solution but here it is
$errors = validation_errors('/', '/');
$errors = explode("/", $errors);
echo $errors[1];
This will only output the first error in the array.
EDIT: Make sure you check if your array has more than 1 value in it
if(count($errors) > 1) {
echo $errors[1];
}

Answer 3

first error
second error
box p:nth-child(2){display: none;}