Mainpulating Jquery validate to have an input as required and do email validation

Question

I need to validate the following form. Some fields are just required, however the email field needs to include email validation. I have tried the following code:

Note: If I take out the 'rules' part, the validation works on all required fields however I need it to first check there is a value frmUser-email input (required) and then if there is a value in there, do the email validation.

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
    $("#adduser").validate({

        rules: {
            frmUser-email: {
                required: true,
                email: true
            }
        },
        errorClass: "my-error-class",
           validClass: "my-valid-class",
           groups: {
              required1: "frmUser-username frmUser-password frmUser-secretword frmUser-secretwordprompt frmUser-usertype"
         },
           errorPlacement: function(error, element) {
            error.appendTo('#errorlabel' )
        }

    });
});

<form id="adduser" name="adduser" method="post" action="?vars=<?php echo URLEncryptEncode('module=user&call=add-process',$urlp);?>">
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="forminput">
  <tr>
    <td>User Login Name:</td>
    <td><input name="frmUser-username" type="text" size="25" class="required"/></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Password:</td>
    <td><input name="frmUser-password" type="text" size="25" class="required"/></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Secret Word:</td>
    <td><input name="frmUser-secretword" type="text" size="25" class="required"/></td>
  </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>Secret Word Prompt:</td>
    <td><input name="frmUser-secretwordprompt" type="text" size="25" class="required"/></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Telephone:</td>
    <td><input name="frmUser-telephone" type="text" size="15"/></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>E-Mail:</td>
    <td><input id="frmUser-email" name="frmUser-email" type="text" size="30"/></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td colspan="2"><input type="submit" value="ADD NEW USER" class="button" /></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
      <td></td>
    <td><label class="errorlabel" id="errorlabel"></label></td>
   </tr>
</table>
</form>

Hopefully someone can help out.. Thanks in advance

Answer 1

First off, you can just specify both classes in your input:

<input id="frmUser-email" name="frmUser-email" type="text" class="required email" size="30"/>

But if you are set on using the rules object, you just need to quote fromUser-email because the - in the middle makes it invalid. So leave everything else the same, but do this for your rules object:

 rules: {
        'frmUser-email': {
            required: true,
            email: true
        }
    }  

Do one or the other and you should be fine.