How to set custom validation messages for HTML forms?

Question

I've got the following HTML form: http://jsfiddle.net/nfgfP/

<form id="form" onsubmit="return(login())">
<input name="username" placeholder="Username" required />
<input name="pass"  type="password" placeholder="Password" required/>
<br/>Remember me: <input type="checkbox" name="remember" value="true" /><br/>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Log In"/>

Currently when I hit enter when they're both blank, a popup box appears saying "Please fill out this field". How would I change that default message to "This field cannot be left blank"?

The type password field's error message is simply *****. To recreate this give the username a value and hit submit.

Answer 1

Use setCustomValidity:

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() {
    var elements = document.getElementsByTagName("INPUT");
    for (var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) {
        elements[i].oninvalid = function(e) {
            e.target.setCustomValidity("");
            if (!e.target.validity.valid) {
                e.target.setCustomValidity("This field cannot be left blank");
            }
        };
        elements[i].oninput = function(e) {
            e.target.setCustomValidity("");
        };
    }
})

I changed to vanilla JavaScript from Mootools as suggested by @itpastorn in the comments, but you should be able to work out the Mootools equivalent if necessary.

If setCustomValidity is set to anything other than the empty string it will cause the field to be considered invalid; therefore you must clear it before testing validity, you can't just set it and forget.

As pointed out in @thomasvdb's comment below, you need to clear the custom validity in some event outside of invalid otherwise there may be an extra pass through the oninvalid handler to clear it.