Custom jQuery validation error messages We have a rule that all of our validation messages must be in a summary, and thus the default "this field is required" doesn't cut it because the messages lose their context in a summary and therefore need specific field indicators.

I have a solution that I like rather well, but it soon became clear that there was a need for messages outside of just the required field (email, URL, custom methods like phoneUS, etc), so I made some additions to my function.

I've been using jQuery for a while, but I'm not an expert in the optimization area, so I wanted to get some expert help on whether the function below could be optimized...my question is, "is there actually a better way to handle custom error messages in a summary?"

$('.required, .email').each(function(index) {
  var $this = $(this);

  var label = (
    $this.is(':radio')
    ? $("label[data-name='"+$this.attr('name')+"']")
    : label = $("label[for='"+$this.attr('id')+"']")
  );

  var customMessages = [{}];

  if($this.hasClass('required')){
    customMessages.required = "'" + label.text() + "' is required.";
  }

  if($this.hasClass('email')){
    customMessages.email = "'" + label.text() + "' has an invalid email address.";
  }

  $this.rules("add", {
    messages: customMessages
  });
});


Here is the jsFiddle:
http://jsfiddle.net/GD5nw/1/
This looks fine to me.

I only have 2 minor points:


You could assign the .text() once in the var statements so that your string concats look like customMessages.email = "'" + label + "' has an invalid email address."; This way you are not repeating text() all over the place.
var customMessages = [{}]; looks odd, because you are afterwards assigning straight to the array instead of the empty object. Simply replacing that with var customMessages = {};  works in the fiddle.