cakephp form validation displaying default message instead of custom - cakephp

Question

Instead of my custom validation message being show upon submitting a form, the default "This field cannot be left blank" is being shown. Any ideas?
Here is my validation:
public $validate = array(
'id' => array(
'rule' => 'notEmpty'
),
'first_name' => array(
'rule' => 'notEmpty'
),
'last_name' => array(
'rule' => 'notEmpty'
),
'accused_of' => array(
'rule' => 'notEmpty'
),
'last_4_of_ssn' => array(
'rule' => '/^[0-9]{4}$/', // NEED TO DOUBLE CHECK THIS
'messsage' => 'Exactly 4 digits'
),
'date_of_accusation' => array(
'rule' => array('date', 'ymd'), // NEED TO DOUBLE CHECK THIS
'message' => 'Date must be in YYYY-MM-DD format.'
),
'monitoring' => array(
'rule' => 'notEmpty'
)
);
And here is my form:
echo $this->Form->create('Offender');
echo $this->Form->input('first_name', array('label' => 'First name:'));
echo $this->Form->input('last_name', array('label' => 'Last name:'));
echo $this->Form->input('accused_of', array('label' => 'Accused of:'));
echo $this->Form->input('monitoring', array('label' => 'Monitoring (enter as comma seperated list. ex: BAC, location):'));
echo $this->Form->input('last_4_of_ssn', array('label' => 'Last 4 digits of SSN:') );
echo $this->Form->input('date_of_accusation', array('label' => 'Date of accusation:'));
echo $this->Form->end('Save New Offender');

Answer 1

It appears for some fields you have not set any custom messages please go to this URL http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/data-validation.html
You can also create a custom validation for this purpose like in validation array do like this
'last_4_of_ssn' => array(
'rule' => array('digitValidate'),
'messsage' => 'Exactly 4 digits'
)
and in Model you can create a public function with the same name.
public function digitValidate() {
$pattern = '/^[0-9]{4}$/';
if (!preg_match($pattern,$this->data['last_4_of_ssn'])) {
return false;
}
return true;
}
I hope this will help you.