ZendFramework 2 - Form - Emailfield with multiple invalid e-mailaddresses leads to "Array to string conversion"

Question

For a project I'm currently working on, I need users to be able to add a comma seperated list of e-mailaddresses ( I will be using selectize later on ).

I'm having trouble validating the addresses, ZF2 automatically adds a e-mailaddress validator ( \Zend\Validator\EmailAddress). Because I set 'multiple' => true in it's attributes, ZF2 also adds a explode validator ( \Zend\Validator\Explode), which should run the e-mailaddress validator for every value once exploded using the seperator ( by default a ',' ). According to the ZF2 FormElements manual that is

The validator works for 1 valid or invalid e-mailaddress, when I however enter 2 invalid e-mailaddress I get a notice: "Notice: Array to string conversion in \project\vendor\zendframework\zendframework\library\Zend\Validator\AbstractValidator.php on line 159".

To rule out anything I did wrong elsewhere, I recreated the bug in a seperate module for the standard ZendSkeletonApplication.

( You can clone my tests from github: git clone https://github.com/Satsume/ZendSkeletonApplication-Tests.git --recursive. Once installed go to /tests/ to see the form. )

The controller

Creating the controller is pretty easy ( simplified ):

<?php
namespace Tests\Controller;

use Zend\Mvc\Controller\AbstractActionController;
use Zend\View\Model\ViewModel;

class IndexController extends AbstractActionController
{
    public function indexAction()
    {
        // Lets build a form the quick-way:
        $form = new \Zend\Form\Form();

        // Add the multiple email field:
        // This adds a \Zend\Validator\EmailAddress
        // And because it's a multiple, a \Zend\Validator\Explode
        $form->add(
            array(
                'type' => 'Zend\Form\Element\Email',
                'name' => 'emails',
                'options' => array(
                    'label' => 'E-mailaddresses',
                ),
                'attributes' => array(
                    'multiple' => true,
                ),
            )
        );

        $validates = false;

        // Check if this is a POST request
        $request = $this->getRequest();
        if ($request->isPost()) {
            // Set the data in the form to validate it:
            $form->setData($request->getPost());

            // Now validate it:
            $validates = $form->isValid();
        }

        // Send the variables to the view:
        return new ViewModel(array(
            'validates' => $validates,
            'form' => $form,
        ));
    }
}
?>

The view

The view isn't that hard either. I added a 'novalidate' on the form tag to stop the html5 browsers from validating the email field, this way we can test zf2's validation more easily.

<?php
/* @var $this \Zend\View\Renderer\PhpRenderer */
/* @var $form \Zend\Form\Form */
$form = $this->form;

$form->setAttribute('action', '?');
$form->setAttribute('method', 'post');
$form->setAttribute('novalidate', 'novalidate');
$form->prepare();
?>

<?php if($this->validates): ?>
    <div class="alert alert-success">It seems the form validates! Well done!</div>
<?php else: ?>
    <div class="alert alert-danger"><strong>Ow snap!</strong> It seems the form doesn't validate...</div>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php echo $this->form()->openTag($form); ?>
    <?php foreach ($form as $element): ?>
        <?php $element->setAttribute('class', 'form-control'); ?>
        <div class="form-group">
            <?php echo $this->formRow($element) ?>
        </div>
    <?php endforeach ?>
    <div class="form-group">
        <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Submit</button>
    </div>
<?php echo $this->form()->closeTag($form); ?>

Conclusion

Do any of you know what it is I'm doing wrong? I assume ZF isn't to blame, but could it?

Update

As @carlos-robles pointed out, it does seem to work in ZF 2.1.5, I'm using dev-master ( Although everything from 2.2 and up has this issue )

Answer 1

After some fiddling ( partially per Carlos' suggestion ) I found that the contents of $this->abstractOptions['messages'] in AbstractValidator.php:159 contained a multi-dimensional array. As was to be expected by the message in the notice.

array_unique, by default, tries to convert the values to string for comparison (SORT_STRING). And thus with a multi-dimensional array it tries to convert an array to a string...

The solution was to change this default behavior by passing a second parameter to array_unique: SORT_REGULAR, this will let the values remain of their original type

---

A pull-request was made for the zf2 master branch to correct this: https://github.com/zendframework/zf2/pull/5808

Answer 2

working for me, with ZF 2.1.5.

Here you have an screenshot of what i get, i think this is the expected result, righ?

---

What version of ZF are you using? in the real project are you using custom error messages? If you look at the line where you get the error, it is:

 /**
 * Returns array of validation failure messages
 *
 * @return array
 */
public function getMessages()
{
    return array_unique($this->abstractOptions['messages']);
}

so it is something related with error messages

What i recommend to do is to go to that file (it should be in /vendor/ZF2//library/Zend/Validator/AbstractValidator.php) and edit the function to see what is the contents of that variable

public function getMessages()
{

     print_r($this->abstractOptions['messages']);
     die();
     return array_unique($this->abstractOptions['messages']);
}

With that probably you will get any clue about what is happening