Validating dependent attributes in Laravel request
There comes a scenario in your app where there are some fields in your form that are dependent on an another field’s state.
For instance, imagine a form with an has_doctor_appointment checkbox, that when checked, toggles an appointment_date and doctor_name input. A user can check the checkbox, fill in a date, and then uncheck the checkbox. The date input is no longer visible, but still contains a value. So when you submit the form, even when the input is not visible, the value still gets posted.
This PR #30835 for Laravel 6.x tries to solve this issue. Quoting from the PR itself
The goal of this PR is to make it easy to exclude attributes from a request based on the value of other attributes. This is useful when having to validate data from a form where certain checkboxes hide or show other inputs.
For this, you need to use exclude_if or exclude_unless validation rules on the dependent fields.
exclude_if & exclude_unless rules
The exclude_if validation rule checks if the field under validation will be excluded from the request data returned by the validate and validated methods if the anotherfield field is equal to value.
This is how you’d write the validation rule.
'appointment_date' => 'exclude_if:has_appointment,false|required|date'
And here’s full example from the PR.
For post data like below:
// Post data:
{"has_appointment": false, "appointment_date": "2019-12-13"}
The exclude_if will be applied like so.
public function post(Request $request)
{
$data = $request->validate([
'has_doctor_appointment' => 'required|bool',
'appointment_date' => 'exclude_if:has_appointment,false|required|date',
'doctor_name' => 'exclude_if:has_appointment,false|required|string',
]);
// $data === ['has_appointment' => false]
SomeModel::create($data);
}
Here, in this examples, appointment_date and doctor_name will get ignored if the value of has_doctor_appointment is set to false.
Similarly, The exclude_unless validation rule checks if field under validation will be excluded from the request data returned by the validate and validated methods unless anotherfield’s field is equal to value.
Like this article? Consider leaving a
Tip
👋 Hi there! I'm Amit. I write articles about all things web development. You can become a sponsor on my blog to help me continue my writing journey and get your brand in front of thousands of eyes.
