How to manually trigger validation with jQuery validate?

Question

That library seems to allow validation for single elements. Just associate a click event to your button and try the following:

$("#myform").validate().element("#i1");

Examples here:

https://jqueryvalidation.org/Validator.element

Or one can simply use: $('#myElem').valid()

if ($('#myElem').valid()){
   // will also trigger unobtrusive validation only for this element if in place 
   // add your extra logic here to execute only when element is valid
}

Note that validate() needs to be called on the form before checking it using this method.

Documentation link: https://jqueryvalidation.org/valid/

My approach was as below. Now I just wanted my form to be validated when one specific checkbox was clicked/changed:

$('#myForm input:checkbox[name=yourChkBxName]').click(
 function(e){
  $("#myForm").valid();
}
)

As written in the documentation, the way to trigger form validation programmatically is to invoke validator.form()

var validator = $( "#myform" ).validate();
validator.form();

There is an undocumented method as of version 1.14

validator.checkForm()

This method silently validate for return true/false. It doesn't trigger error messages.

Eva M from above, almost had the answer as posted above (Thanks Eva M!):

var validator = $( "#myform" ).validate();
validator.form();

This is almost the answer, but it causes problems, in even the most up to date jquery validation plugin as of 13 DEC 2018. The problem is that if one directly copies that sample, and EVER calls ".validate()" more than once, the focus/key processing of the validation can get broken, and the validation may not show errors properly.

Here is how to use Eva M's answer, and ensure those focus/key/error-hiding issues do not occur:

1) Save your validator to a variable/global.

var oValidator = $("#myform").validate();

2) DO NOT call $("#myform").validate() EVER again.

If you call $("#myform").validate() more than once, it may cause focus/key/error-hiding issues.

3) Use the variable/global and call form.

var bIsValid = oValidator.form();