The API is not designed for validating a single field, hence keeping that method protected. What is the use case where you're attempting to validate a single field in a form without validating the entire form?

@mbabker I am implementing ajax based autosave functionality for the form. I need to save/update the field value when a user adds or updates the field value.

Before adding or updating the field I need to validate its data and hence need a way to validate single field's data.

Changing the access specifier will allow the extension developers to use the validateField() method to validate individual field in the controller or as per there needs OR we can update the signature of the validate() method in the JForm class so that we can pass optional third parameter "fieldname" which is passed then it will validate only the specified field against the data.

TBH this doesn’t sound like a workflow a validation API should be
supporting. Generally, you’re giving the validator a set of data to
validate and checking it all in one go, the validator’s internals of
checking each item individually aren’t exposed as the public interface.

If you really need to use this kind of behavior, your best options are to
either do some manipulation in the controller to build a stub Form class
containing only the field you want to validate or to subclass the Form
class and make the method public yourself (which is allowed in PHP). I
don’t think the default core behavior should expose this internal behavior
as a public interface and therefore suggested workflow for all developers.

On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 11:57 PM ankush-maherwal notifications@github.com
wrote:

@mbabker https://github.com/mbabker I am implementing ajax based
autosave functionality for the form. I need to save/update the field value
when a user adds or updates the field value.

Before adding or updating the field I need to validate its data and hence
need a way to validate single field's data.

Changing the access specifier will allow the extension developers to use
the validateField() method to validate individual field in the controller
or as per there needs OR we can update the signature of the validate()
method in the JForm class so that we can pass optional third parameter
"fieldname" which is passed then it will validate only the specified field
against the data.

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• Michael Please pardon any errors, this message was sent from my iPhone.

The Form::validate($data, $group = null) class already allows an optional group name, to validate only fields from that group. https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/blob/staging/libraries/src/Form/Form.php#L1182

The proposal is to add an optional third parameter that provides a specific field name to validate. For lengthy forms, this opens up a use case of building a autosave/draft save feature that only validates certain fields.

That group parameter is already a code smell to me. The interface on a
proper validation API (see: Symfony and/or Laravel) is checking a data
object or an array, it does not give you the ability to validate only a
single field on those items.

Like I said before, the right way to handle this “I want to validate only a
single field to do X” scenarios is either creating a stub Form instance
containing only the single field you want to validate, or since you want to
use the class internals and ignore the proper interface, subclass the Form
class so you can direct access the validateField method.

Either way, from an engineering perspective validating a single field only
in a dataset feels like an incorrect use of a validation API. This would
potentially allow you to reach a state where part of your dataset
(typically a database row) is in an invalid state yet the row is still
updated in its storage location (most likely database), which can create
more problems later on.

On Tue, Sep 3, 2019 at 7:14 AM Ashwin Date notifications@github.com wrote:

The Form::validate($data, $group = null) class already allows an optional
group name, to validate only fields from that group.
https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/blob/staging/libraries/src/Form/Form.php#L1182

The proposal is to add an optional third parameter that provides a
specific field name to validate. For lengthy forms, this opens up a use
case of building a autosave/draft save feature that only validates certain
fields.

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• Michael Please pardon any errors, this message was sent from my iPhone.

The form field stub is a good idea. We'll try that out ! Thanks

Set to "closed" on behalf of @alikon by The JTracker Application at issues.joomla.org/joomla-cms/26091

i'm closing here as per suggested workaround