How can I manually set an Angular form field as invalid?

Adding to Julia Passynkova's answer

To set validation error in component:

formData.form.controls['email'].setErrors({'incorrect': true});

To unset validation error in component:

formData.form.controls['email'].setErrors(null);

Be careful with unsetting the errors using null as this will overwrite all errors. If you want to keep some around you may have to check for the existence of other errors first:

if (isIncorrectOnlyError){
   formData.form.controls['email'].setErrors(null);
}

I was trying to call setErrors() inside a ngModelChange handler in a template form. It did not work until I waited one tick with setTimeout():

template:

<input type="password" [(ngModel)]="user.password" class="form-control" 
 id="password" name="password" required (ngModelChange)="checkPasswords()">

<input type="password" [(ngModel)]="pwConfirm" class="form-control"
 id="pwConfirm" name="pwConfirm" required (ngModelChange)="checkPasswords()"
 #pwConfirmModel="ngModel">

<div [hidden]="pwConfirmModel.valid || pwConfirmModel.pristine" class="alert-danger">
   Passwords do not match
</div>

component:

@ViewChild('pwConfirmModel') pwConfirmModel: NgModel;

checkPasswords() {
  if (this.pwConfirm.length >= this.user.password.length &&
      this.pwConfirm !== this.user.password) {
    console.log('passwords do not match');
    // setErrors() must be called after change detection runs
    setTimeout(() => this.pwConfirmModel.control.setErrors({'nomatch': true}) );
  } else {
    // to clear the error, we don't have to wait
    this.pwConfirmModel.control.setErrors(null);
  }
}

Gotchas like this are making me prefer reactive forms.

In new version of material 2 which its control name starts with mat prefix setErrors() doesn't work, instead Juila's answer can be changed to:

formData.form.controls['email'].markAsTouched();

in component:

formData.form.controls['email'].setErrors({'incorrect': true});

and in HTML:

<input mdInput placeholder="Email" type="email" name="email" required [(ngModel)]="email"  #email="ngModel">
<div *ngIf="!email.valid">{{email.errors| json}}</div>