Validation Error not displayed on Field but Error Page

Question

On a custom page I use an inputField, to make a picklist editable. To make it required I added a validation rule and linked the error location to the picklist field.

But instead of showing up on the field, it loads a new page to only show the error message.

Update failed. First exception on row 0 with id a0Ad000000W8DDOEA3; first error: FIELD_CUSTOM_VALIDATION_EXCEPTION, Status must be set!: [] Error is in expression '{!doSave}' in component in page up2go_2f:myPage: Class.MY_PREFIX.MyCtrlExt.doSave: line 25, column 1 An unexpected error has occurred. Your development organization has been notified.

I also set it to "Top of Page", same behaviour. didn't help either.

Page:

<apex:form id="form">
    <apex:pageMessages />

    <apex:pageBlock mode="edit">

        <apex:pageBlockButtons location="top">
            <apex:commandButton value="Save" action="{!doSave}" rerender="form" />

        </apex:pageBlockButtons>

        <apex:pageBlockTable...
        // display all the fields I need & do some more stuff

Controller:

public PageReference doSave() {
    update links;
}

How can I ensure, the message will be shown on the location I selected when creating the validation rule?

Answer 1

Yes, we can specify where the error message would be displayed. But this applies to standard layouts and not to the custom developed visualforce pages. You need to change your function as to make it work:

public PageReference doSave() {
try{
    update links;
}catch(Exception e){
  ApexPages.addMessages(e);
  }
}

This will redirect validation messages to visualforce page. The errors would be displayed at the location of <apex:pagemessages /> tag