Doctrine_manual-1-2-en

Chapter 10: Component Overview 184
example 2 as well as "7" are both valid integers whilst "3f" is not. Type validations
occur on every column (since every column definition needs a type).
• Length validation: As the name implies, all values assigned to columns are validated
to make sure that the value does not exceed the maximum length.
You can combine the following constants by using bitwise operations: VALIDATE_ALL,
VALIDATE_TYPES, VALIDATE_LENGTHS, VALIDATE_CONSTRAINTS, VALIDATE_NONE.
For example to enable all validations except length validations you would use:
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// bootstrap.php
// ...
$manager->setAttribute(Doctrine_Core::ATTR_VALIDATE, VALIDATE_ALL &
~VALIDATE_LENGTHS);
You can read more about this topic in the Data Validation (page 209) chapter.
More Validation
The type and length validations are handy but most of the time they're not enough. Therefore
Doctrine provides some mechanisms that can be used to validate your data in more detail.
Validators are an easy way to specify further validations. Doctrine has a lot of predefined
validators that are frequently needed such as email, country, ip, range and regexp
validators. You find a full list of available validators in the Data Validation (page 209) chapter.
You can specify which validators apply to which column through the 4th argument of the
hasColumn() method. If that is still not enough and you need some specialized validation
that is not yet available as a predefined validator you have three options:
• You can write the validator on your own.
• You can propose your need for a new validator to a Doctrine developer.
• You can use validation hooks.
The first two options are advisable if it is likely that the validation is of general use and is
potentially applicable in many situations. In that case it is a good idea to implement a new
validator. However if the validation is special it is better to use hooks provided by Doctrine:
• validate() (Executed every time the record gets validated)
• validateOnInsert() (Executed when the record is new and gets validated)
• validateOnUpdate() (Executed when the record is not new and gets validated)
If you need a special validation in your active record you can simply override one of these
methods in your active record class (a descendant of Doctrine_Record). Within these
methods you can use all the power of PHP to validate your fields. When a field does not pass
your validation you can then add errors to the record's error stack. The following code
snippet shows an example of how to define validators together with custom validation:
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// models/User.php
class User extends BaseUser
{
protected function validate()
{
if ($this->username == 'God') {
// Blasphemy! Stop that! ;-)
// syntax: add(, )
$errorStack = $this->getErrorStack();
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