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From a request

Using validation

When creating a data object from a request, the package can also validate the values from the request that will be used to construct the data object.

The package automatically infers rules for certain properties. For example, a ?string property will automatically have the nullable and string rules.

Be aware, first the rules will be generated from the data object you're trying to create, then if the validation is successful a data object will be created with the validated data. This means validation will be run before a data object exists.

It is possible to add extra rules as attributes to properties of a data object:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        #[Max(20)]
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }
}

When you provide an artist with a length of more than 20 characters, the validation will fail just like it would when you created a custom request class for the endpoint.

You can find a complete list of available rules here.

If you want to have full control over the rules, you can also define them in a dedicated rules method on the data object (see later).

Referencing route parameters

Sometimes you need a value within your validation attribute which is a route parameter. Like the example below where the id should be unique ignoring the current id:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        #[Unique('songs', ignore: new RouteParameterReference('song'))]
        public int $id,
    ) {
    }
}

If the parameter is a model and another property should be used, then you can do the following:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        #[Unique('songs', ignore: new RouteParameterReference('song', 'uuid'))]
        public string $uuid,
    ) {
    }
}

Referencing other fields

It is possible to reference other fields in validation attributes:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        #[RequiredUnless('title', 'Never Gonna Give You Up')]
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }
}

These references are always relative to the current data object. So when being nested like this:

class AlbumData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $album_name,
        public SongData $song,
    ) {
    }
}

The generated rules will look like this:

[
    'album_name' => ['required', 'string'],
    'songs' => ['required', 'array'],
    'song.title' => ['required', 'string'],
    'song.artist' => ['string', 'required_if:song.title,"Never Gonna Give You Up"'],
]

If you want to reference fields starting from the root data object you can do the following:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        #[RequiredUnless(new FieldReference('album', fromRoot: true), 'Whenever You Need Somebody')]
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }
}

The rules will now look like this:

[
    'album_name' => ['required', 'string'],
    'songs' => ['required', 'array'],
    'song.title' => ['required', 'string'],
    'song.artist' => ['string', 'required_if:album_name,"Whenever You Need Somebody"'],
]

Rule attribute

One special attribute is the Rule attribute. With it, you can write rules just like you would when creating a custom Laravel request:

// using an array
#[Rule(['required', 'string'])] 
public string $property

// using a string
#[Rule('required|string')]
public string $property

// using multiple arguments
#[Rule('required', 'string')]
public string $property

It is also possible to write rules down in a dedicated method on the data object. This can come in handy when you want to construct a custom rule object which isn't possible with attributes:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }
    
    public static function rules(): array
    {
        return [
            'title' => ['required', 'string'],
            'artist' => ['required', 'string'],
        ];
    }
}

By overwriting a property's rules within the rules method, no other rules will be inferred automatically anymore for that property.

Always use the array syntax for defining rules and not a single string which spits the rules by | characters. This is needed when using regexes those | can be seen as part of the regex

It is even possible to use the validationAttribute objects within the rules method:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }
    
    public static function rules(): array
    {
        return [
            'title' => [new Required(), new StringType()],
            'artist' => [new Required(), new StringType()],
        ];
    }
}

Rules defined within the rules method will always overwrite automatically generated rules.

You can even add dependencies to be automatically injected:

use SongSettingsRepository;

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }
    
    public static function rules(SongSettingsRepository $settings): array
    {
        return [
            'title' => [new RequiredIf($settings->forUser(auth()->user())->title_required), new StringType()],
            'artist' => [new Required(), new StringType()],
        ];
    }
}

Sometimes a bit more context is required, in such case a ValidationContext parameter can be injected as such: Additionally, if you need to access the data payload, you can use $payload parameter:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }
    
    public static function rules(ValidationContext $context): array
    {
        return [
            'title' => ['required'],
            'artist' => Rule::requiredIf($context->fullPayload['title'] !== 'Never Gonna Give You Up'),
        ];
    }
}

By default, the provided payload is the whole request payload provided to the data object. If you want to generate rules in nested data objects then a relative payload can be more useful:

class AlbumData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        #[DataCollectionOf(SongData::class)]
        public DataCollection $songs,
    ) {
    }
}

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public ?string $artist,
    ) {
    }
    
    public static function rules(ValidationContext $context): array
    {
        return [
            'title' => ['required'],
            'artist' => Rule::requiredIf($context->payload['title'] !== 'Never Gonna Give You Up'),
        ];
    }
}

When providing such payload:

[
    'title' => 'Best songs ever made',
    'songs' => [
        ['title' => 'Never Gonna Give You Up'],
        ['title' => 'Heroes', 'artist' => 'David Bowie'],
    ],
];

The rules will be:

[
    'title' => ['string', 'required'],
    'songs' => ['present', 'array'],
    'songs.*.title' => ['string', 'required'],
    'songs.*.artist' => ['string', 'nullable'],
    'songs.*' => [NestedRules(...)],
]

It is also possible to retrieve the current path in the data object chain we're generating rules for right now by calling $context->path. In the case of our previous example this would be songs.0 and songs.1;

Make sure the name of the parameter is $context in the rules method, otherwise no context will be injected.

Mapping a request onto a data object

By default, the package will do a one to one mapping from request to the data object, which means that for each property within the data object, a value with the same key will be searched within the request values.

If you want to customize this mapping, then you can always add a magical creation method like this:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }
    
    public static function fromRequest(Request $request): static
    {
        return new self(
            $request->input('title_of_song'), 
            $request->input('artist_name')
        );
    }
}

Getting the data object filled with request data from anywhere

You can resolve a data object from the container.

app(SongData::class);

We resolve a data object from the container, it's properties will allready be filled by the values of the request with matching key names. If the request contains data that is not compatible with the data object, a validation exception will be thrown.

Automatically inferring rules for properties

Since we have such strongly typed data objects, we can infer some validation rules from them. Rule inferrers will take information about the type of the property and will create validation rules from that information.

Rule inferrers are configured in the data.php config file:

/*
 * Rule inferrers can be configured here. They will automatically add
 * validation rules to properties of a data object based upon
 * the type of the property.
 */
'rule_inferrers' => [
    Spatie\LaravelData\RuleInferrers\SometimesRuleInferrer::class,
    Spatie\LaravelData\RuleInferrers\NullableRuleInferrer::class,
    Spatie\LaravelData\RuleInferrers\RequiredRuleInferrer::class,
    Spatie\LaravelData\RuleInferrers\BuiltInTypesRuleInferrer::class,
    Spatie\LaravelData\RuleInferrers\AttributesRuleInferrer::class,
],

By default, four rule inferrers are enabled:

SometimesRuleInferrer will add a sometimes rule when the property is optional
NullableRuleInferrer will add a nullable rule when the property is nullable
RequiredRuleInferrer will add a required rule when the property is not nullable
BuiltInTypesRuleInferrer will add a rules which are based upon the built-in php types:
- An int or float type will add the numeric rule
- A bool type will add the boolean rule
- A string type will add the string rule
- A array type will add the array rule
AttributesRuleInferrer will make sure that rule attributes we described above will also add their rules

It is possible to write your rule inferrers. You can find more information here.

Skipping validation

Sometimes you don't want properties to be automatically validated, for instance when you're manually overwriting the rules method like this:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $name,
    ) {
    }
    
    public static function fromRequest(Request $request): static{
        return new self("{$request->input('first_name')} {$request->input('last_name')}")
    }
    
    public static function rules(): array
    {
        return [
            'first_name' => ['required', 'string'],
            'last_name' => ['required', 'string'],
        ];
    }
}

When a request is being validated, the rules will look like this:

[
    'name' => ['required', 'string'],
    'first_name' => ['required', 'string'],
    'last_name' => ['required', 'string'],
]

We know we never want to validate the name property since it won't be in the request payload, this can be done as such:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        #[WithoutValidation]
        public string $name,
    ) {
    }
}

Now the validation rules will look like this:

[
    'first_name' => ['required', 'string'],
    'last_name' => ['required', 'string'],
]

Overwriting the validator

Before validating the values, it is possible to plugin into the validator. This can be done as such:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }
    
    public static function withValidator(Validator $validator): void
    {
        $validator->after(function ($validator) {
            $validator->errors()->add('field', 'Something is wrong with this field!');
        });
    }
}

Overwriting messages

It is possible to overwrite the error messages that will be returned when an error fails:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }

    public static function messages(): array
    {
        return [
            'title.required' => 'A title is required',
            'artist.required' => 'An artist is required',
        ];
    }
}

Overwriting attributes

In the default Laravel validation rules, you can overwrite the name of the attribute as such:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }

    public static function attributes(): array
    {
        return [
            'title' => 'titel',
            'artist' => 'artiest',
        ];
    }
}

Overwriting other validation functionality

Next to overwriting the validator, attributes and messages it is also possible to overwrite the following functionality.

The redirect when a validation failed:

class SongData extends Data
{
    // ...

    public static function redirect(): string
    {
        return action(HomeController::class);
    }
}

Or the route which will be used to redirect after a validation failed:

class SongData extends Data
{
    // ...

    public static function redirectRoute(): string
    {
        return 'home';
    }
}

Whether to stop validating on the first failure:

class SongData extends Data
{
    // ...

    public static function stopOnFirstFailure(): bool
    {
        return true;
    }
}

The name of the error bag:

class SongData extends Data
{
    // ...

    public static function errorBag(): string
    {
        return 'never_gonna_give_an_error_up';
    }
}

Using dependencies in overwritten functionality

You can also provide dependencies to be injected in the overwritten validator functionality methods like messages , attributes, redirect, redirectRoute, stopOnFirstFailure, errorBag:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }

    public static function attributes(
        ValidationAttributesLanguageRepository $validationAttributesLanguageRepository
    ): array
    {
        return [
            'title' => $validationAttributesLanguageRepository->get('title'),
            'artist' => $validationAttributesLanguageRepository->get('artist'),
        ];
    }
}

Authorizing a request

Just like with Laravel requests, it is possible to authorize an action for certain people only:

class SongData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $artist,
    ) {
    }

    public static function authorize(): bool
    {
        return Auth::user()->name === 'Ruben';
    }
}

If the method returns false, then an AuthorizationException is thrown.

Validating a collection of data objects:

Let's say we want to create a data object like this from a request:

class AlbumData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        #[DataCollectionOf(SongData::class)]
        public DataCollection $songs,
    ) {
    }
}

Since the SongData has its own validation rules, the package will automatically apply them when resolving validation rules for this object.

In this case the validation rules for AlbumData would look like this:

[
    'title' => ['required', 'string'],
    'songs' => ['required', 'array'],
    'songs.*.title' => ['required', 'string'],
    'songs.*.artist' => ['required', 'string'],
]

Validating a data object without request

It is also possible to validate values for a data object without using a request:

SongData::validate(['title' => 'Never gonna give you up', 'artist' => 'Rick Astley']);

This will either throw a ValidationException or return a validated version of the payload.

It is possible to return a data object when the payload is valid when calling:

SongData::validateAndCreate(['title' => 'Never gonna give you up', 'artist' => 'Rick Astley']);

Retrieving validation rules for a data object

You can retrieve the validation rules a data object will generate as such:

AlbumData::getValidationRules($payload);

This will produce the following array with rules:

[
    'title' => ['required', 'string'],
    'songs' => ['required', 'array'],
    'songs.*.title' => ['required', 'string'],
    'songs.*.artist' => ['required', 'string'],
]

Payload requirement

We suggest always to provide a payload when generating validation rules. Because such a payload is used to determine which rules will be generated and which can be skipped.

Computed values

From data to resource

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From a request

On this page

##Using validation

##Referencing route parameters

##Referencing other fields

##Rule attribute

##Mapping a request onto a data object

##Getting the data object filled with request data from anywhere

##Automatically inferring rules for properties

##Skipping validation

##Overwriting the validator

##Overwriting messages

##Overwriting attributes

##Overwriting other validation functionality

##Using dependencies in overwritten functionality

##Authorizing a request

##Validating a collection of data objects:

##Validating a data object without request

##Retrieving validation rules for a data object

##Payload requirement