1

I am designing a dynamic form with multivalued field (with the famous "Add another value" button).

My question concerns the validation of this type of fields :

Should blank values be blocking (the user has to remove empty input fields before submitting the form) or should the form take care of removing those empty fields at submit ?

Update : mockup added as requested

enter image description here

6
  • Have you got a mockup of your current form - or at least of these type of fields?
    – JonW
    Dec 17, 2013 at 12:32
  • doesn't that depend on the type of the field? if the content can be edited later, leaving it empty might be fine. "hours worked" will be empty in the beginning, but a user might want to enter a value without adding the whole field.
    – Lovis
    Dec 17, 2013 at 12:46
  • As it is a dynamically generated form, there is no way to specialize according the semantic of the fields.
    – NicoINCH
    Dec 17, 2013 at 12:53
  • I see. I thought it would be more like defining a template for later re-use.
    – Lovis
    Dec 17, 2013 at 13:23
  • What is the user describing? Dec 17, 2013 at 14:54

1 Answer 1

2

I had this implemented in one of my recent projects where we had to use a multivalue form to add user names to the list. If an user tried to add a new field and there was an empty field already available, we showed an error message which asked users to populate the previously added new field before adding a new one and also disabled the add button.

mockup

download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups

However if the user did delete the empty field then the button was re-enabled.

We found this to be really useful as we often found users had added a new field to add a specific value and got distracted and forgotten to add it and the alert allowed them to check the data again

1
  • This is the solution I wanted to implement in the first place, but I was not sure than blocking the user was the right solution...
    – NicoINCH
    Dec 17, 2013 at 17:39

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.