Since upgrading my site to Rails 4, the client-side-validations gem has stopped working for me. I have had a look at the various alternatives such as jquery-validation-rails
From the Google.
http://rubygems.org/gems/rails4_client_side_validations
https://github.com/amatsuda/html5_validators
Also this guy seemed to have gotten the same gem you are using to work by using the 4-0-beta branch.
Client Side Validations and Rails4
If the 4-0-beta branch works for you, consider helping to maintain the gem to keep it alive.
To use a certain git repo version in your Gemfile:
gem 'client-side-validations', :git => 'https://github.com/bcardarella/client_side_validations/tree/4-0-beta'
I was able to use a fork of the original client_side_vlaidations that is very active at the moment. I am using the latest version of simple_form, rails 4.1.8, and this client_side_validations. Simple setup with basic config.
I know the question is old, but how about good old require: "require"?
For example in view:
<%= f.text_area :body, placeholder: "Write your review here...", class: "form-control", rows: "5", required: "required" %>
While the client side validations will work for the simple cases, they'll require an enormous amount of workarounds to work with more complicated scenarios (for instance - conditional validations). I would recommend using Judge instead, which give you more control.
If you are using Bootstrap Form for Rails, you can give bootstrap_validator_rails a try.
https://github.com/huynhquancam/bootstrap_validator_rails