Z_Form :: Adding a custom error message to zend_form inside Action Controller

I'm new to ZF and I'm discovering how to use Zend_Form and utilize it's capability like validating and filtering input values. I already know开发者_Go百科 the basic of Zend_form like building a form and add element into it. My problem is that I want to add a custom error message to form element and I want to define that message inside the action controller that instantiated the form. I want to defined the error message inside the controller because I need to perform a validation against the database. For example checking if the username/email already exist in the database. I tried googling and that's leads me to setErrorMessage method of zend_form but when I try to use it, the error message is not showing at all... I also tried zend_form->setError and still no error displaying in the view script. Is my idea of setting custom error in the action controller correct or this should be done the other way?

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Are you using Zend_Validate_Db_RecordExists?

Something like this should work:

 $form->getElement('username')->getValidator("RecordExists")->setMessage('This username exists',
                Zend_Validate_Db_RecordExists::ERROR_RECORD_FOUND
            );

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This works for me:

$form->getElement('username')->addError('This username exists.');