Argh

A powerful PHP helper class to validate arrays and objects.

The primary usage is to validate arguments passed to a web server (i.e. validating $_GET and $_POST vars) against a series of per variable checks. For example:

Argh::validateArgs(
	$_GET, //array to validate
	array( //array of what to validate
		"customerName"	=> array("string", "notblank"), //array of checks to perform on $_GET["customerName"]		
		"customerDOB"	=> array("regex /[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}"), // array of checks to perform on $_GET["customerDOB"]
	)
);

It can be used for much more general purposes too. For instance, it can be used as part of a web services testing framework to validate responses to REST/JSON requests; Parsing the JSON into a PHP array using json_decode, one can then validate both the structure, and content of the resulting array thusly:

Argh::validateArgs(
	$decodedJSON,
	array(
		"Customer" => array("array"), //check that $decodedJSON["Customer"] is itself an array
	
		//We can also deal with multi dimensional arrays, so if you have a customer object in you're JSON, you can validate it like:
		"/Customer/FirstName"	=> array("string", "regex /[a-zA-Z]*/"),
		"/Customer/LastName"	=> array("string", "regex /[a-zA-Z]*/"),

		//We can go deeper too, and deal with numeric arrays
		"/Customer/PreviousAddresses/0/HouseNumber"	=> array("int"),

		//What?! you want to validate all the elements of a numeric array without repeating yourself and knowing how long the array with be? OK, just do:
		"/Customer/PreviousAddresses/*/HouseNumber"	=> array("int"),
	)
);

This flexible path specification structure combined with the checks below (particularly the regex and clojure options) make this a powerful, yet easy to use validation tool.

When validating, you can either pass an optional callback to handle validation transgressions, or by default Argh will throw a ValidationException. Argh::validate will also return true|false

Exposed Methods

validateArgs( array $arguments, array $constraints, \Callable $callback = null , bool $dumpOnViolation = false)

Parameters:

• $arguments - An array to validate, e.g. $_POST
• $constraints - An array of key -> properties, see example
• $callback - A callback to call on validations errors instead of throwing exceptions.

Supported Constraints:

• int - must be an integer (implies 'numeric')
• numeric - must be numeric
• notzero - must not be zero (implies 'numeric')
• notblank - string must not be blank (implies 'string')
• string - must be string
• array - must be array
• func - provided Closure must return true.
• lbound arg - must not be below arg (e.g. "lbound 2")
• ubound arg - must not be above arg (e.g. "ubound 600")
• regex arg - must match regex given be arg
• class name - must be instanceof th given class

Any constraint can be prepended with "?" to allow null as well.

See example usage below

getVersion()

returns the version number of this class

EXAMPLE USAGE:

/**
* callback function for argument validation - used by ArgValidator class
*/
$handleArgValidationError = function ($msg, $argName="", $argValue="")
{
	echo "<pre>";
	echo "There has been a validation error"
	var_dump($msg);
	var_dump($argName);
	var_dump($argValue);
	echo "</pre>";
	exit;
}

//A closure can also be used instead of "handleArgValidationError"
($_GET, array(
		"test1" => array("string", "notblank"),
		"test2" => array(function($a){return $a > 0;}),
		"test3" => array("lbound 5","ubound 500"),
		"test4" => array("regex /a/"),
		"test5" => array("notzero"),
		"test5" => array("array"),
	),
	$handleArgValidationError
);

See Test-Examples Directory for more examples