Foundation

An opinionated way to register custom validators in Laravel.

Installation

Begin by installing the package through Composer.

$ composer require laravel-validators/foundation

Create a service provider that extends LaravelValidators\Foundation\ValidationServiceProvider.

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use LaravelValidators\Foundation\ValidationServiceProvider as ServiceProvider;

class ValidationServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
  /**
   * The validation rules provided by your application.
   *
   * @var array
   */
  protected $rules = [
  //  'gender' => \App\Validators\GenderValidator::class,
  ];

  /**
   * Register the Closure based validators for the application.
   *
   * @return void
   */
  public function rules()
  {
    //
  }
}

Then add the following to the providers array in config/app.php.

App\Providers\ValidationServiceProvider::class

Usage

This package does not add any special functionality, it is essentially a wrapper for the following.

Validator::extend('gender', App\Validators\GenderValidator::class, 'Must be male or female.');

Creating validators

Like Laravel you can define custom validators as either closures or classes. Validators are typically stored in the app/Validators directory; however, you are free to choose your own storage location as long as your commands can be loaded by Composer.

Generating validators

To create a new validator, use the make:validator Artisan command - provided by this package. This command will create a new validator class in the app/Validators directory. Don't worry if this directory does not exist in your application, since it will be created the first time you run the make:validator Artisan command.

$ php artisan make:validator GenderValidator

The validate method will be called when your validator is executed. You may place your validation logic in this method.

Let's take a look at an example validator. Note that we are able to inject any dependencies we need into the validator's constructor. The Laravel service container will automatically inject all dependencies type-hinted in the constructor:

<?php

namespace App\Validators;

class GenderValidator
{
  /**
   * Validate the given value.
   *
   * @param  string  $attribute
   * @param  mixed  $value
   * @param  array  $parameters
   * @param  \Illuminate\Contracts\Validation\Validator  $validator
   * @return  bool
   */
  public function validate($attribute, $value, $parameters, $validator)
  {
    return in_array($value, ['male', 'female']);
  }
}

Finally register the custom validator class in the $rules array in App\Providers\ValidationServiceProvider.

protected $rules = [
  'gender' => \App\Validators\GenderValidator::class,
];

Closure validators

Closure based validators provide an alternative to defining validators as classes. These are defined in the App\Providers\ValidationServiceProvider class using the inherited ->rule() method.

/**
 * Register the Closure based validators for the application
 *
 * @return void
 */
public function rules()
{
  $this->rule('gender', function ($attribute, $value, $parameters, $validator) {
    return in_array($value, ['male', 'female']);
  });
}

Error messages

If your custom validator class provides a public static message() method, it will be used to retrieve the validation message.

<?php

namespace App\Validators;

class GenderValidator
{
  /**
   * Validate the given value.
   *
   * @param  string  $attribute
   * @param  mixed  $value
   * @param  array  $parameters
   * @param  \Illuminate\Contracts\Validation\Validator  $validator
   * @return  bool
   */
  public function validate($attribute, $value, $parameters, $validator)
  {
    return in_array($value, ['male', 'female']);
  }
  
  public function sanitize($value)
  {
    return strtolower($value);
  }

  /**
   * Set the validation error message.
   *
   * @return string
   */
  public static function message()
  {
    return 'You can only specify male or female as your gender.';
  }
}

Sanitize input

If you want to sanitise data before it is validated, you can specify a sanitize method on your validator.

<?php

namespace App\Validators;

class GenderValidator
{
  /**
   * Validate the given value.
   *
   * @param  string  $attribute
   * @param  mixed  $value
   * @param  array  $parameters
   * @param  \Illuminate\Contracts\Validation\Validator  $validator
   * @return  bool
   */
  public function validate($attribute, $value, $parameters, $validator)
  {
    return in_array($value, ['male', 'female']);
  }
  
  /**
   * Sanitize the given value before it is validated.
   *
   * @param mixed $value
   * @return mixed
   */
  public function sanitize($value)
  {
    return strtolower($value);
  }
}

Credits

• Christopher L Bray
• All contributors