WET-BOEW form validation running for webform Previous button

We needed to disable WET-BOEW inline client-side validation when users click the Previous button on multi-step Drupal Webforms. Users should be able to move back without being blocked by validation errors.

Approaches Tested

1. HTML5 formnovalidate attribute
Added via hook_webform_submission_form_alter().
Result: Browser validation disabled, but WET/jQuery Validate still executed, so errors continued to appear.

2. jQuery Validate .cancel class trick
Added class="cancel" to the Previous button.
Result: Works in plain jQuery Validate, but WET wraps validation and ignores this path, so validation still triggered.

3. Using global once() to intercept click
JS attempted to intercept click and re-submit.
JS correctly attached, but validation still fired before the handler, indicating event order problem.

Final Solution

The issue was order of execution. WET’s validation submit handlers were firing before our script. The successful approach was to:

• Mark the Previous button in PHP: data-wet-skip-validation="1"
• In JS:
• Use capture-phase event listener (addEventListener(..., true))
• Call preventDefault() and stop propagation
• Submit the form via native form.submit(), bypassing WET/jQuery handlers

Result:
Previous button now navigates back a page with no inline validation, while Next / Submit continue to enforce WET validation normally.

Included in 6.1.x.