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As the name suggests, this is the simplest way to define a validation rule. The general syntax for defining rules this way is:

var $validate = array('fieldName' => 'ruleName');

1. var $validate = array('fieldName' => 'ruleName');

Where, 'fieldName' is the name of the field the rule is defined for, and ‘ruleName’ is a pre-defined rule name, such as 'alphaNumeric', 'email' or 'isUnique'.

For example, to ensure that the user is giving a well formatted email address, you could use this rule:

var $validate = array('user_email' => 'email');

1. var $validate = array('user_email' => 'email');