How To Create Custom Validation Rules With Laravel

By clivern On March 27, 2014 In Laravel, PHP with 6 Comments
How To Create Custom Validation Rules With Laravel

You don’t need laravel built in validation rules and wish if you could create your own validation rules. Well, fortunately laravel is very flexible as it allows you to build your own validation rules and with a bunch of ways.

The first way to build you own validation rules is to extend validator class with new rules in routes.php file. But first we need to create our form.

<!--app/views/form.blade.php-->
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
 <head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <title>
   Laravel
  </title>
 </head>
 <body>
  {{ Form::open(array('url'=>'form-submit')) }}

  <!-- text input field -->
  <ul class="errors">
   @foreach($errors->get('username') as $error)
   <li>{{ $error }}</li>
   @endforeach
  </ul>
  {{ Form::label('username','Username',array('id'=>'','class'=>'')) }}
  {{ Form::text('username','',array('id'=>'','class'=>'')) }}
  <br/>
  <!-- email input -->
  <ul class="errors">
   @foreach($errors->get('email') as $error)
   <li>{{ $error }}</li>
   @endforeach
  </ul>
  {{ Form::label('email','Email',array('id'=>'','class'=>'')) }}
  {{ Form::email('email','',array('id'=>'','class'=>'')) }}
  <br/>
  <!-- submit buttons -->
  {{ Form::submit('Save') }}
  
  <!-- reset buttons -->
  {{ Form::reset('Reset') }}
  
  {{ Form::close() }}
 </body>
</html>

Then let’s extend validator class with new rule.

//create foo validation rule
Validator::extend('foo', function($field,$value,$parameters){
 //return true if field value is foo
 return $value == 'foo';
});
Route::get('form', function(){
 //render app/views/form.blade.php
 return View::make('form');
});

Route::post('form-submit', function(){
 //get all inputs
 $inputs = Input::all();
 //create array of validation rules
 $rules = array('username'=>'required|foo|min:4|max:35','email'=>'required|email');
 //set custom error messages
 $messages = array(
     'foo'=>'Field value must be foo'
 );
 //validate inputs
 $validator = Validator::make($inputs,$rules,$messages);
 if($validator->passes()){
  //inputs valid
  echo 'Well';
 }else{
  //return to form view with errors
  return Redirect::to('form')->withErrors($validator);
 }
});

As you can see I used Validator::extend() method to create custom validation rule. The first parameter is the field name, The second parameter is the field value and third is an array of any parameters that have been passed to the rule. If a boolean false returned, Validation fail and error message appear.Then i created two routes, One for form view and another for form validation.

You may also create stand alone class in app/validators/ and pass class name and method to extend() method instead of closure. You will need to create app/validators directory as it doesn’t exist by default, create customValidation.php file then create customValidation class. Each class method represent new validation rule and should passed later to Validator::extend('rule_name','class@method') in routes.php file.

// app/validators/customValidation.php
 class customValidation
 {
  public function foo($field, $value, $parameters){
  //return true if field value is foo
  return $value == 'foo';
  }
 }

//app/routes.php
//create foo validation rule
Validator::extend('foo', 'customValidation@foo');

Well, Remember that you will need to update composer.json classmap to include new directory (validators).

"autoload": {
 "classmap": [
  "app/commands",
  "app/controllers",
  "app/models",
  "app/database/migrations",
  "app/database/seeds",
  "app/tests/TestCase.php",
  "app/validators"
 ]
},

Then run the following command in your terminals to update autoloading (vendor/composer/autoload_classmap.php). I hope you already have a global install of composer.

$composer dump-autoload

Generating autoload files

Let’s open vendor/composer/autoload_classmap.php to check changes made.

return array(
  BaseController' => $baseDir . '/app/controllers/BaseController.php',
  /*....*/
  'UsersTableSeeder' => $baseDir . '/app/database/seeds/DatabaseSeeder.php',
  'customValidation' => $baseDir . '/app/validators/customValidation.php',
);

Now you can use foo rule and add new rules to customValidation class but don’t forget to extend validator class with these rules.

6 comments.

  1. HI clivern !

    I follow you tuto but when i launch the command:
    vendor/composer/autoload_classmap.php

    the line:
    ‘customValidation’ => $baseDir . ‘/app/validators/customValidation.php’,

    doesn’t appear…

    Can I put it manually ?

  2. It’s easier way: add customValidation.php file to /app/controllers/
    In customValidation.php your rules:
    class customValidation
    {
    public function foo($field, $value, $parameters){
    //do stuf
    }
    }

    Add Validator::extend(‘foo’,’customValidation@foo’) in app/routes.php
    then composer dump-autoload
    Done.

  3. Hi clivern,

    This post is for laravel 4.1, can you please have it updated for laravel 5.2? I need to have a similar validation for my project. Also, I am not able to find any validator in laravel 5.2?

Comments are closed.