title: How to Use jquery.Validate with a jquery.multiselect Dropdown?
body: <p>So the situation is this: attempting to add a dropdown box using the <a href="http://www.erichynds.com/jquery/jquery-ui-multiselect-widget/" rel="noreferrer">jquery.multiselect</a> plugin on a form that current uses the <a href="http://bassistance.de/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-validation/" rel="noreferrer">jquery.validate</a> plugin that has other fields (text input fields, single text input that has a <code>float</code> value range) that all currently validate correctly.</p>
  
  <p>When I attempt to add validation rules I simply cannot get jquery.validate to validate my multiselect dropdown whatsoever.  Here are snippets of my code (all assumes that required plugins are loaded - see below for versions used):</p>
  
  <p><strong>The HTML:</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;form action="some/action" id="myForm" method="POST"&gt;
      Input 1: &lt;input type="text" value="" name="input1" maxlength="200" id="input1"&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
      Input 2: &lt;input type="text" value="" name="input2" maxlength="100" id="input2"&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
      Input 3: &lt;input type="text" value="" name="input3" maxlength="50" id="input3"&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
      Select: &lt;select class="someSelect" name="mySelect" id="mySelect" multiple="multiple"&gt;
          &lt;option value="some_val1"&gt;Some Value&lt;/option&gt;
          &lt;option value="some_val2"&gt;Some Other Value&lt;/option&gt;
      &lt;/select&gt;
      &lt;input type="submit" value="Submit" /&gt;
  &lt;/form&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>The Javascript:</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>$(document).ready(function() {
      $('#mySelect').multiselect({
          noneSelectedText: 'Select Something (required)',
          selectedList: 3,
          classes: 'my-select'
      });
  
      $.validator.addMethod("needsSelection", function(value, element) {
          return $(element).multiselect("getChecked").length &gt; 0;
      });
  
      $.validator.addMethod("isPercent", function(value, element) {
          return parseFloat(value) &gt;= 0 &amp;&amp; parseFloat(value) &lt;= 100;
      });
  
      $.validator.messages.needsSelection = 'You gotta pick something.';
      $.validator.messages.isPercent = 'Must be between 0% and 100%';
  
      $('#myForm').validate({
          rules: {
              mySelect: "required needsSelection",
              input1: "required isPercent",
              input2: "required",
              input3: "required"
          },
          errorClass: 'invalid'
      });
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Versions</strong>
  If there's an explicit/known issue with compatibility between the versions, then I may upgrade if that solves the issue, but I've tested using the newest versions for my purposes and it did not seem to solve my issue.</p>
  
  <p><strong>jQuery</strong>: 1.4.4</p>
  
  <p><strong>jquery.validate</strong>: 1.9.0</p>
  
  <p><strong>jquery.multiselect</strong>: 1.8</p>
  
  <p>And, as always, I can provide more information where possible/needed.</p>