Overview

Validation of SharePoint PeopleEditor WebControl on the client-side is often required. On server side validation is supported, see AllowEmpty and  ValidatorEnabled properties for details, but the lack of client side validation makes it inconvenient for scenarios where client side validation is mandatory. So let’s discuss some techniques how it could be achieved.

Server-Side Validation

In order to enable/disable validation for Entity Editor based controls (like People Editor) the following properties should be specified in combination:

• AllowEmpty – represents whether an empty entity is allowed
• ValidatorEnabled – represents whether a Validator is enabled

For example, the  code below demonstrates how to disable empty values:

Client-Side Validation

Let’s start with the simple method that allows to check if PeopleEditor control is not empty.

The code below demonstrates  how to validate if SharePoint PeopleEditor control value is not empty

It can be used in the following scenarios:

• as standalone validation function, i.e.  triggered on submit or click events
• with ASP.NET Custom Validator as ClientValidationFunction with some modifications applied.

Since jQuery is commonly used  in SharePoint front-end development, it validation  capabilities could be used  for  PeopleEditor,  for example  jQuery Validation plugin. The code below demonstrates how validation rule that allow us to verify if PeopleEditor value is not empty, may look like.

References

• ASP.NET Validation in Depth
• jQuery plugin: Validation