MVC Question: Should I put form validation rules in the controller or model?

Question

On one hand form validation could be seen as part of the application logic and therefore belonging in the model.

On the other hand, it deals directly with the input coming from view and handles displaying errors, etc. From that angle it makes more sense to put it into controllers.

Which one is the right approach from the MVC point of view?

P.S my form validation actually consists only of writing a list of fields, their rules, and passing it on to a form validation library, which returns true/false on whether it passed validation or not.

Example:

$this->load->library('form_validation'); $this->form_validation->set_rules('name', 'Name', 'required'); $this->form_validation->set_rules('email', 'Email', 'required|valid_email'); //........ if ($this->form_validation->validate())     // Process data else     $this->register_form(); //A controller action that will show a view with errors 

Should this be put into a controller or model?

Answer 1

Ideally, you want 3 layers of validation:

1. View: Client side (javascript, html5 validation, etc.). This catches obvious errors and omissions before the data hits the controller, wasting the user's time and invoking an unnecessary page load if there are errors.
2. Controller: This is your Form validation layer. Controllers usually are meant to handle input directly, and send it over to the model. It is very rare that every field in your form has a directly related column in your DB, you usually need to alter the data in some way before passing it to the model. Just because you have a field you need to validate called "confirm email", doesn't mean that your model will be dealing with a "confirm email" value. Sometimes, this will be the final validation step.
3. Model: This is your last line of defense for validation, and possibly your only validation in the case of sending data to the model without it coming directly from a form post. There are many times when you need to send data to the DB from a controller call, or with data that is not user input. We don't want to see DB errors, we want to see errors thrown by the app itself. Models typically should not be dealing with $_POST data or user input directly, they should be receiving data from the controller. You don't want to be dealing with useless data here like the email confirmation.

Answer 2

Validation is Model's issue. Only model knows how your data should look like. You describe your data fields in model, so you should describe validation rules for this fields in the same place.

It seems to be obvious for me, but I'd gladly listen to opponents.