Document Signature - Validation Issue

Question

This is the recent help i've been trying to get on this subject over at acrobatusers.com. You can read through the issue i'm having through here, answer that was given and my response.
Summary: Basically there are multiple text fields that are set to required, customer name, email...etc. All fields must be locked after being digitally signed (through the document signature field). When default validation pattern are used (blank) it generates an error (Customer field could not be validated). After trying regular expression script, it generates an error (Customer field could not be validated). So i tried a number of different combinations of picture clauses, and from what i'm gathering you have to know exactly how many characters are going to be typed to use that sort of validation. Which in a customer name field you have know idea what their name is going to be (unless you customize a document for each individual customer (not possible)).
If anyone could help on this problem would be a lifesaver. Thank you
::COPY OF HELP QUESTION SUBMITTED::
Apparently I'm not getting the field validation examples in the Help (F1) of Livecycle. I've been struggling to get all the fields in a collection to validate properly. Once I add a Document Signature field to the document and assign the fields to a collection, it doesn't seem to like the default validation settings if I assign the fields to 'User Input: Required' So for the name field I've tried multiple validation patterns all to no avail. My question is how to write a custom validation pattern that allows for an unknown ammount of characters in a name, email..etc. I've tried A A which only validates if the user enters J D for example but John Doe does not work. I've tried other combinations but nothing works. Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you
::ANSWER SUBMITTED BY COMMUNITY EXPERT::
A:There are a couple of things you need to look at. First, is the Acrobat Picture Clause Reference. You can find it and other LiveCycle references on this site
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/xml/index_arch.html
The other thing to look at is using a JavaScript validation script with a Regular Expression. Regular Expressions are much more flexible that the picture clause at doing validation.
Answered by Thom Parker on Fri, Jul 6, 2007
::RESPONSE FROM ME BACK::
Q:After reading through the Picture Clause Reference I'm certain there is no way to validate the customer name field without first knowing how many characters will be entered in. And I'm pretty sure there is no simple way of just making it "required" without a pattern to verify against.
The Document Signature Field acts pretty weird if the text field is 'required' and there is nothing to validate it against. Which all in all I just want to make sure it is filled out. Customer Name field (First and Last name) one text field.
So I tried the regular expression route, and added it to the 'Validate' section of the text field. Still I think the problem lies in the way the Document Signature field processes the 'required' fields.
Now I noticed that this only happens if I set the document signature field to lock the required fields after digitally signing the document. This is a mandatory feature the document needs to have, along with the document signature. And the custom stamp option is not a viable solution to this either, since in my field of work everything is questioned whether or not it was altered or forged in some manner. And Custom 'Forged' stamps would not be too difficult to recreate, so that idea is out of the window.
I'm stumped on this and any suggetions as to what route to take would be greatly appreciated. I can not release a document to the customers with validation error messages popping up even though the fields are filled out. Just wouldn't be professional, and down right annoying considering it validates about 15 fields, and everyone except the date and tim

Answer 1

Hey Robert,
I've been having the same issue where, once digitally signed, I end up having an issue with my mandatory fields returning an error '[mandatory field name] validate failed'. Is this the sort of errors you are getting? I'm also trying to find answers on this as I've tried a few things but it hasnt worked well. One thing I did was to change the mandatory field back to optional and coded my submit button using the if clause when the submit button is pressed to check if the this mandatory field is filled in.
if ((pgDetails.txtReqBy.rawValue != null) &&(pgDetails.txtReqBy.rawValue != ""))
event.target.submitForm({cURL:"mailto:[email address]?subject=New/Edit Supplier Detail Form&body=Please find attached the completed form.",cSubmitAs:"PDF",cCharset:"utf-8"});
else
xfa.host.messageBox("Requested by field MUST be filled. Pls enter your full name.");
This seems to work fine except for one thing. If first time around, I fill the form out leaving the mandatory field blank, it returns the message "Requested by field MUST be filled. Pls enter your full name." So now I go back and fill in the mandatory field and, without navigating to another field, I click the submit button, I get the same message "Requested by field MUST be filled. Pls enter your full name." as it has not picked up the new value of the field. Any idea if there is code to make it re-read the field?
Rgds,
Jan