Forms Accept Any Input Without Validation
Forms in your Base44 app accept and save any input without validation. Users can submit empty required fields, enter text in number fields, submit absurdly long strings, or inject HTML and scripts into text fields. This corrupts your data and can create security vulnerabilities.
Without validation, your database fills with garbage data: empty email fields, phone numbers with letters, negative quantities, and dates in the wrong format. Reports become unreliable, automated workflows break on bad data, and cleaning up the mess is time-consuming.
Worse, malicious users can inject scripts that execute when other users or admins view the submitted data, potentially stealing sessions or performing actions on their behalf.
Error Messages You Might See
Common Causes
- No field constraints configured — Base44 form fields don't have required, min/max, or format rules set
- Client-side validation only — HTML5 validation attributes exist but can be bypassed by submitting directly to the API
- Text fields without length limits — Users can paste megabytes of text into a single field, bloating the database
- Number fields accepting strings — Price, quantity, and age fields store whatever string is submitted
- No sanitization of HTML content — Rich text or description fields accept raw HTML and JavaScript
How to Fix It
- Add required field rules — Mark all mandatory fields as required in both the form configuration and the data table schema
- Set field type constraints — Configure number fields to accept only numbers, email fields to validate email format, and date fields to accept only valid dates
- Add length limits — Set maximum character limits on text fields (e.g., 255 for names, 1000 for descriptions)
- Sanitize text input — Strip HTML tags from plain text fields and sanitize rich text fields to allow only safe HTML elements
- Add server-side validation rules — Configure validation at the data layer so it can't be bypassed by direct API calls
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Get HelpFrequently Asked Questions
Why is client-side validation not enough?
Anyone can bypass browser validation by editing the HTML, disabling JavaScript, or sending requests directly to the API. Server-side or data-layer validation is the only reliable way to ensure data integrity.
How do I clean up existing bad data?
Export your table data, clean it in a spreadsheet by removing empty rows and fixing formats, then re-import. Going forward, add validation rules to prevent bad data from being saved.