“The only permission, the only validation, and the only opinion that matters in our quest for greatness is our own.” - Steve Maraboli
Everyone has a type. Do you not have a favorite type of color, food, movie, or number? How does your type affect your values, beliefs and feelings of validation? What does validation mean to you?
Why do people seek out validation from others if everyone has different types? No two people are alike so doesn’t that mean no one will ever win if one relies on outside validation all the time. Isn’t validation supposed to come from the inside? Do you not validate your own worth?
In Computer Science, validation or verification is the process of checking that a software or application has met the required guidelines and its intended purpose. The one who decides the requirements and purpose is the client, you. Shouldn’t you have an idea of what you want the application or website to look like and do?
You may not know or understand the technical details such as how to code something, but what you do know is the big picture of what you want to happen. You know your type better than anyone else in the world. Our purpose as web designers and developers is to help you clearly define which of your types are needed to validate your customers’ inputs.
How Is Validation Used in Web Development?
You decide the type of customers you want to attract and repel by letting us know your conditions. Every condition has a data type. If you try to match conditions with different data types, you may receive an unintentional error.
Error checking is called data validation. Understanding your type helps in making your website or application safer to use. Presented below are common data validations, but there are many more types than the ones listed.
Examples of data validation are:
- Allowed character checks or regular expression (REGEX) = validate emails
- Consistency checks = validate two separate fields for emails/passwords that must match during registration
- Data type checks = in PHP, gettype() allows us to make sure that the right type of input is entered or else output an error message to the user such as when adding numbers [0-9] instead of strings [A-Za-z].
- File existence check = checks that the file exists for file handling
- Limit check = users only register once for an event using <= 1 by their matching email count
- Logic check = math rules such as dividing by 0 will output an error
- Presence/Required check = adds asterisk for required fields on forms
- Range check = only certain ages can register; setting the minimum or maximum
- Spelling and grammar check = CMSs or browsers have automated spell checks
- Uniqueness check = each value in a list or data storage has a unique identity (ex: Address, Name, Email, ID)
Data validation and type checking makes it easier to do the right thing yet much harder to do the wrong thing. Without data validation, corruption of data and security vulnerabilities will likely occur. In other words, your type defines your standards, qualities and conditions for decision making.
How Is Validation Used In Business?
If your competitve advantage is differentiation and innovation, here's a quote from Steve Jobs when he released technologies like the Ipad “It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.” How do you validate your idea if no one has ever seen anything quite like it before? Doesn't this depend on how well you know yourself and your customers?
To make sure that people do have a need or want for your product or service type, you need some form of validation for your ideas. Self-validation is enough only if you are trying to market to people exactly like yourself. But as mentioned before, no two people are alike. You must do some type of market research to know who your desired audiences are.
You are who you attract because customers are captivated by companies that they can feel safe and good about. Once you fully believe in your type and validate yourself, that confidence will shine and gain the right people’s interests, yet lose the wrong ones. Why would you want to charm those who are not your type?
