Hello Keith,

It is in fact possible to validate a select widget, but it takes a bit more work… the reason for this is that we don’t provide a validator for the select widget so you’ll have to build one.

The validator can be created using an expression. The expression value should be the error message and you must include the following extended properties:

name: This will be used to find the validator and to set it up. ("wtMySelectValidatorType" in the sample)
controltovalidate: The id of the control to validate. This is the name of the select you want to validate prefixed with “wt”. ("wtMySelect" in the sample)
clientvalidationfunction: The javascript function you’ll be using to validate the select widget. ("mySelectCustomValidator" in the sample)
evaluationfunction: This is always "CustomValidatorEvaluateIsValid"
style: This should be set to "color:Red;display:none;", the style of the validator messages.
display: This should be set to “Dynamic”, to indicate that you wish this message to appear when the value is incorrect and disappear when the value is correct.

The way you setup the validator during page load is also a bit different. You must add your validator to the set of page validators and then call a function that prepares the recently added validator:

// This functions sets up the validators
function setValidator() {
	// Get the validator we created
	var val = getSpanByName("wtMySelectValidatorType");
	// Add it to the page validators
	Page_Validators.push(val);
	// Register the new validator
	ValidatorOnLoad();
}

The code for the validator function can do any check you want. In this case it validates if the selected item is “Right”:

// This is the function that implements the custom validator
function mySelectCustomValidator (source, arguments) {
	// Get the field object
	var objField = document.all[source.controltovalidate];
	// Check if the object value is greater than "Right"
	arguments.IsValid = objField.options[objField.selectedIndex].text == "Right";
}

Note the usage of a function called “GetSpanByName” in the “setValidator” function. This is an auxiliary function with the following code:

// This is a helper function, to get the correct span
function getSpanByName(spanName) {
	var spans = document.getElementsByTagName("SPAN");
	var i;
	for (i=0; i < spans.length; i++) {
		if (spans[i].name == spanName) {
			return spans[i];
		}
	}
}

Note that this only works if there are other inputs in the web page (this is why there is another input in the sample). The other input insures that the validator code is added to the rendered page.

Best of luck,
Rodrigo