How do you make fields required?

[flyingmonkey]

I am publishing a simple input only database on an intranet. I am using the connection assistant with Claris home page to generate my pages. How do I make a field a required field? I don't really need to validate the type of information but just that something was entered.

[yafreax]

in FM use the validation in the define fields option and choose "Not Empty."

Technically you are validating it. This is all you have to do.

[Vaughan]

The post from "yafreax" pretty much sums it up: use FMP's field validation.

Adding on to their advice, to make the web solution slightly more elegant and useable it is worth noting that when the validatin fails, web companion will return the "error" page to the user. The error pages created by Home Page's FMP Connection Assistant are pretty basic, and the message they will get will probably be nothing more than "there has been an error, error XXXX" where XXX is the exact error code (take a note of what it is BTW).

What you could do is use an [FMP-IF] on the error page that traps for the particular error and presents them with a more appropriate message, like "Please make sure the YYYY field has a value entered. Use your browser's BACK button to return to the form."

The exact error value returned depends on the validation that you use in FMP. For a complete listing of error codes, go to FMP Help and print out the info for the Status(CurrentError) function.

For instance, if the field has "Not Empty" validation in FMP then error 509 will probably be returned.