Conditionally validate request fields in Laravel
The usual way of validating request attributes in Laravel is by making Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator instance with your static rules that never change like so.
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers\API\v1\Users;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator;
use App\Entities\Models\User;
class UserController extends Controller
{
public function store(Request $request)
{
// validate incoming request
$validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
'email' => 'required|email|unique:users',
'name' => 'required|string|max:50',
'password' => 'required',
'subscription_type' => 'required'
]);
if ($validator->fails()) {
Session::flash('error', $validator->messages()->first());
return redirect()->back()->withInput();
}
}
}
You pass in all the request attributes along with validation rules that you want to validate, as an array to the second argument of make method.
Now, there might be a scenario where you might want to validate some fields only if certain conditions met. Meaning, you want to make validation conditional. How would you do this?
Using sometimes method
This can be done by using sometimes on the validator instance. So, for instance, in the previous example, if you want to validate the payment_method attribute only when the subscription_type is set to premium, you can do it like so.
$validator->sometimes('payment_method', 'required', function ($input) {
return $input->subscription_type === 'premium';
});
Here, the $input parameter passed to the Closure will be an instance of Illuminate\Support\Fluent and can be used to access your input and files.
To take it further, you can add conditional validations for several fields at once like so.
$validator->sometimes(['payment_method', 'card_number'], 'required', function ($input) {
return $input->subscription_type === 'premium';
});
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