Laravel 4 Validation

Question

I use the following rules for validation on creating a new user:

protected $rules= [
    'name'    => 'required',
    'email'    => [
        'required',
        'unique:user',
        'email'
    ]
];

When updating an existing user I use the same ruleset as shown above but don't want a validation error if the user didn't change his email at all.

I currently resolve this by using the following:

if (!User::changed('email')) {
    unset($user->email);
}

It feels like a dirty workaround to me so I was wondering if there are better alternatives.

Also note that the changed method is something I wrote myself. Does anyone know if there is a native Laravel 4 method for checking whether a model property has changed?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The unique validation rule allows to ignore a given ID, which in your case is the ID of the data set you are updating.

'email' => 'unique:users,email_address,10'

http://four.laravel.com/docs/validation#rule-unique

Answer 2

One approach is to create a validation function in the model and call it with the controller passing in the input, scenario and id (to ignore).

public function validate($input, $scenario, $id = null)
{
    $rules = [];

    switch($scenario)
    {
        case 'store':
            $rules   = [
                'name'     => 'required|min:5|unique:users',
                'email'    => 'required|email|unique:users',
                'password' => 'required|min:4|confirmed'
            ];
            break;

        case 'update';
            $rules   = [
                'name'     => 'required|min:5|unique:users' .',name,' . $id,
                'email'    => 'required|email|unique:users' .',email,' . $id,
                'password' => 'min:4|confirmed'
            ];
            break;
    }

    return Validator::make($input, $rules);
}

Then in the controller:

    $input      = Input::all();
    $validation = $user->validate($input, 'update', $user->id);

    if ($validation->fails())
    {
        // Do stuff
    }
    else
    {
        // Validation passes
        // Do other stuff
    }

As others mentioned, the 3rd parameter of the unique rule specifies an id to ignore. You can add other cases, such as 'login' to reuse the validation function.

Alternatively, Jeffrey Way at Tuts Premium has a great series of lessons in "What's New In Laravel 4" which includes a couple of other approaches to handling validation using services and listeners.

Answer 3

See the documentation on http://four.laravel.com/docs/validation#rule-unique

You can exclude the users own id

protected $rules= [
    'name'    => 'required',
    'email'    => [
        'required',
        'unique:user,email,THE_USERS_USER_ID',
        'email'
    ]
];

Answer 4

As of 2014-01-14, you can use sometimes attribute, I believe Taylor added them 2 days ago to Laravel 4.1

$v = Validator::make($data, array(
    'email' => 'sometimes|required|email',
));

sometimes only validate input if it exists. this may or may not suit your exact scenario, if you don't have a default value for insert.

http://laravel.com/docs/validation#conditionally-adding-rules