Indeed, isValid does not perform the validation at all (this is done by a listener on POST_SUBMIT) but gives you the result

Is there any easy way to bypass the validation step that we can propose in the docs?

AFAICS, setting validation_group to false should do the trick.

With validation_groups = FALSE some basic integrity checks will still be performed (like presence of redundant data in POST, which sometimes can happen if you build a dynamic form where fields depend on each other and repaint it via ajax on value change)

A little bit related to this, as of Symfony 2.3, the validation_groups option can be set on a button field. So that if you submit using this button, that validation group will be used. That doesn't help this issue, but it would be a nice note to add :).

I think the best thing to do is tell people about setting validation_groups to false. I don't think it's possible to disable the basic integrity checks as these are very fundamental to the way the forms system works. But, I'm also not sure what the use-case is for needing to completely disable validation (since you can always choose to show or not show the errors), so if the validation_groups solution is not good enough and someone has a use-case, tell us :).

• Document setting validation_groups to false with a quick note in the forms chapter (see the original link above)

@weaverryan I would move the documentation of validation_groups on a button to a new issue. It is no directly related to this issue I think. But we can interlink both of course. What do you think?

@xabbuh I agree! I've moved it to #3358