Production version skips validation

Rails
1

I’m trying to validate_presence_of a hidden_field, which works fine on
my machine, but when I upload it to the production server (Apache
front-end running WEBrick behind) it skips validation every time. The
form field values are assigned with a javascript function, and then it
is submitted using javascript instead of a submit tag.

Controller:
def result
case @request.method
when :post
@result = Result.new(@params[‘result’])
if @result.save
flash[‘notice’] = “Evaluation Submitted”
redirect_back_or_default :action => “nextpt”
end
when :get
@result = Result.new
end
end

View:

                        <%= start_form_tag :action=> "result" %>
                        <%= hidden_field "result",

“DefinitionUseful” %>
<%= hidden_field ‘result’, ‘DefinitionComments’ %>
<%= hidden_field “result”, “SOPPUseful”
%>
<%= hidden_field ‘result’, ‘SOPPComments’ %>
<%= hidden_field “result”, “RIDeMResultUseful” %>
<%= hidden_field ‘result’, ‘RIDeMResultComments’ %>
<%= hidden_field ‘result’, ‘EvaluatorUserID’, :value=>
session[‘user’].UserID %>
<%= hidden_field ‘result’,
‘StudyPatientNumber’, :value=>@patient.PatientNumber %>
<%= end_form_tag %>

      <tr><td colspan="3" align="center"><input type="button"

value=“Submit and Continue” onclick=“submitForm();” />

Model:
class Result < ActiveRecord::Base
set_table_name “CCStudyResults”

validates_length_of :DefinitionUseful, :minimum => 5, :message =>
“seems to short”
end

I’m still pretty new at this. Any ideas? Thanks!!!