Web form validation

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limakid2015​

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Preran

The one thing no one has mentioned so far, is the one thing only the developer of the site will know.

Connection speed.

If you are developing a site for your local area and you know that everyone will have a good connection speed, (both broadband and mobile) then use whatever method you feel most comfortable using for browser side validation. No matter which you use custom error messages are almost always possible, and styling can be done using css in all cases.

If however like me your user can be anywhere in the world, and they may even be using a shared dial-up connection , then keeping everything within strict download size limits becomes much more important. In such a case 3rd party js and any extra files to download becomes a problem to be avoided.

The one thing that every site must do, is server-side validation, as this is the one validation that will not only be your catch-all validation, but the one that will also stop malicious users sending you spam, or even the one that will stop them using your server as a means of sending spam to others.

As said by others above, most simple forms need no more than HTML5 for client side validation and PHP for server side validation. Combine the HTML5 with a bit of eye candy as per http://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/components/forms/ and add a CAPTCHA as per reCAPTCHA: Easy on Humans, Hard on Bots and you are ready to run.

At the moment I use the DMXZone validator for both client and server side as per https://www.dmxzone.com/go/32902/app-connect-form-validator , but prior to that I used Examples - FormValidation which is a much cheaper option.

Of course, you could hand code the whole process yourself, but my experience is that your time can be better utilised elsewhere.

The complexity of your form will dictate which is best.   If it's a simple log-in form, you don't need much eye candy.  But say you have a complicated survey and you want to engage users with lots of visual incentives to keep going.   Then jQuery +  Bootstrap's  .has-success will come in handy. 

Depends how pretty you want the validation to be. If its not a concern then just use html5 and a server side validation like php. If you want something  with a bit of eye-candy use some javascript or jquery for the client side.

I would just use html5 form validation for the browser, then server-side validation on the server, as this would cover all user cases if done correctly.

Including any other form of validation is a waste of time, even pre html5 supporting browsers would be caught by the server-side validation. One could argue that none html5 supporting browser users would have to re-enter all the information again, should there be an error, but if someone, (a user) is that worried about re-entering info they would have updated to a more modern, and more secure browser anyway.