Blog

Howto: Minimum word count for textareas

08/15/2009 09:31 PM

1069	3	11

This post was inspired by Dragon's request.

Sometimes it may be useful to set minimum length of the filed. Especially for textareas. This is example for profile editing page. Let's say we want minimum 5 words for every textarea field.

Open your lib.account_profile.php, function save_member(), line ~464 (Validate value conditions)
Right after:

PHP

elseif ($field['field_maxlength'] && strlen($field['field_value']) > $field['field_maxlength'])
{
$TEMPLATE->set_message("error", str_replace("%1%", $field['field_name'], str_replace("%2%", $field['field_maxlength'], ($LANG['profile']['field_too_long']))), 0, 0);
return 0;
}

Add this:

PHP

elseif ($field['field_type'] == 'textarea' && $field['field_required'] && str_word_count($field['field_value']) < 5)
{
$TEMPLATE->set_message("error", str_replace("%1%", $field['field_name'], str_replace("%2%", 5, ($LANG['profile']['field_too_short']))), 0, 0);
return 0;
}

Now we have to add language string to /includes/languages/english/lang.lib.account_profile.php
right below "field_too_long" translation:

PHP

"field_too_short" =>
"\"%1%\" has to contain at least %2% words.",

Voila!

P.S.: If you still want to count only chars, use strlen function instead of str_word_count.
P.P.S.: That was controlling number of words for textareas in Edit profile page. If you want control words number during registration modify lib.account_register.php page!

Comments

slinky

Posted on 12/02/2009 11:30 AM

This works perfectly in 2.5.5 - I just installed it. Not sure if my other comment shows but it's a great hack and you might have problems if you forget to set text fields as "required" if you want this hack to work.

slinky

Posted on 12/02/2009 08:52 AM

I got this to work in 2.5.5 - it won't work if your text field is not "required" and there are problems with the required ones too I have found. If you remove the required part it works although it will cycle you through every text field to fill out.

radioact

Posted on 11/08/2009 08:50 PM

That was controlling number of words for textareas in Edit profile page. If you want control words number during registration modify lib.account_register.php page