I have a form that has many checkboxes (too many for it to make sense to use their own rules), and I need to use the [jQuery Validation Plugin](http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Validation) to make sure at least one of them is selected. They all have different names, so most of the solutions I've found so far by Googling don't work for me.

However, I came across [this](http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/Scripting/JavaScript/Jquery/Q_24282111.html) post, which I tweaked a bit to make this extension method:

```
// method for checking out checkboxes for the form validation
$.validator.methods.checkboxes_checked = function(value,element,param) {
   return ($('#signup #checkboxes input[type=checkbox]:checked').length > 0);
}

```

... which returns true or false depending if there are any of the checkboxes selected. I don't want to use the method from the above post verbatim, since that would require making separate rules for each checkbox, and as I have a lot of them (20+), that doesn't make much sense to me.

My only issue is that I don't know how to wire this into my validation call, since I don't have a "single" element on the page to tie it too (as in, all my other validation rules are tied to a specific single element, whereas my extension method above would be--in essence--tied to 20+ elements). Here's how my validation call looks now:

```
// validate the form
$('#signup').validate({
   rules: {
      'bedrooms': { required: true },
      'maxrent': { required: true },
      'term': { required: true },
      'movedate': { required: true },
      'firstname': { required: true, minlength: 2 },
      'lastname': { required: true, minlength: 1, maxlength: 1 },
      'email': { required: true, email: true },
      'day_telephone': { required: true, digits: true, minlength: 10, maxlength: 10 }
   },
   errorPlacement: function(error, element) { error.css('display','none'); },
   highlight: function(element, errorClass) { 
      $(element).fadeOut(function() { $(element).fadeIn(); });
      $('label[for='+$(element).attr('name')+']').css('color','red');
   },
   unhighlight: function(element, errorClass) { $('label[for='+$(element).attr('name')+']').css('color','black'); },
   onkeyup: false
});

```

I want, basically, for the form itself to check (using the jQuery Validation Plugin) if my extension method returns true before submitting. How can I add this in?