Web forms are regarded as the basic way of obtaining input data from the users. Nevertheless it is very obvious that you will have to validate the input data coming in from the users before you accept it and store it on the server thus giving importance to Server Side Validation. The reason is that if the input data is not validated it will generate errors in the code at the server side. There are loads of options available for validating form data such as by making use of various frameworks such as Apache Wicket for JAVA or Code Igniter for PHP which are commonly used form validation routines for validating the code lines in the program for the input data given by the user.
The jQuery plugins not only beautify and enhance your form elements on any HTML page but as well can completely change the look and feel of your website. It is very easy to enable and use these jQuery plugins. To be Honest Filling out forms is a great pain in the Ass for Users and for Developers it is even a bigger pain in the Ass to build them. Nobody actually likes them and are actually considered to be one of the biggest challenges any web developer has to take on because when it comes to forms it is not just the ease of design of the form that they need to take care of but they as well have to make it usable and accessible to the users and definitely it is not a Cakewalk.
If you are seriously head bashing over your form validation errors then here is a list of few top notch and widely used jQuery Form Validation plugins that will help soothe the head of web developers so that the task of form validation becomes just so easy and a great coding experience for the developers :
1) Password Validation jQuery Plug-in
This jQuery plug-in provides a function for rating passwords depending on a wide range of factors such as combination of digits, alphabets, special characters, mixed lower or upper case alphabets, length & similarity to any username, etc. There is a custom method for the validation plug-in which makes use of the rating function for displaying the strength meter and this function requires the field to have a good rating for the password to be strong and secure.
2) Type Watch jQuery Plug-in
This is a jQuery plug-in which gets enables when you type something and has four variant settings:
• Capture Length – This is function describes the minimal number of characters that are necessary before allowing the event to trigger and the default value for this setting is set to two. • Call Back: This is a function that is used to callback after the user has completed typing and the default value of this setting is set to Void. • Highlight: This function determines whether the text in the textbox should be highlighted when the textbox is being focused and the default value for this is set to true.
• Wait: This function determines the number of milliseconds the plug0in has to wait before it considers that the user has finished typing and the default value of this is set to 750 milliseconds.
3) Masked Input Plug-in
This plug-in is used for masking the input that is entered into the forms. With the help of this plug-in the user will be easily able to enter the fixed width input fields wherein there is a need of entering the data in specific formats such as date of birth or phone number.
4) Uploadify jQuery Plug-in
With the help f this plug-in it is easy to integrate single or multiple file uploads on any website. This plug-in requires the use of any Backend Web Development Language and Flash. You will be provided with a wide range of options for complete customization if you are an advanced user however the basic implementation of this plug-in is so easy that any person who is inexperienced at coding can also do it.
5) Niceforms jQuery Plug-in
This plug-in will reinstate all the commonly used web elements on your form with the custom designed form elements. One can make use of the default themes that come with this plug-in or develop their own themes as per their needs with minimal efforts.
6) Elastic jQuery Plug-in
This plug-in is used when you want to shrink the size of your text area or grow the size of your text area as per your requirements. This plug-in was actually stimulated and stirred from the auto growing text areas on Facebook.
7) Noble Count jQuery Plug-in
Say if you want to restrict the number of characters to be entered in a particular field and want the users to be aware of how many characters they have entered then in that case this is a must have plug-in to be used into your form. This plug-in will dynamically display the number of characters that are remaining in the text area to be entered something like the Twitter Style.
8) Auto Numeric jQuery Plug-in
This plug-in is of great use if your form requires input of high value numerics. This plug-in is an automatic international numeric formatter which will automatically place the thousand separators as you key in the numeric in the field. This plug-in supports near about 9 various rounding methods so that you use the one as per your needs and specifications.
9) jQuery Alpha Numeric Plug-in
If you want to restrict the user on the type of characters that can be entered into the text area or the text box then you might be interested in this plug-in.
10) Password Strength Plug –in
This plug-in will estimate the brute force time i.e. it will calculate the number of possibilities a hacker will have to try in order to crack your password. This plug-in functions by the assumption that there is a possibility to test nearly two thousand eight hundred million passwords in one second.