Laravel 5.1 date_format validation allow two formats

Question

I use following date validation for incoming POST request.

'trep_txn_date' => 'date_format:"Y-m-d H:i:s.u"' 

This will only allow a date of this kind i.e. 2012-01-21 15:59:44.8

I also want to allow date without the TIME e.g. 2012-01-21, which when sent to mysql db will automatically store as 2012-01-21 00:00:00.0

Is there a way I can do this using a Laravel's existing validation rules. Is there a way to define multiple formats in date_format rule something like below.

'trep_txn_date' => 'date_format:"Y-m-d H:i:s.u","Y-m-d"' //btw this didn't work. 

Thanks,

K

Answer 1

The date_format validator takes only one date format as parameter. In order to be able to use multiple formats, you'll need to build a custom validation rule. Luckily, it's pretty simple.

You can define the multi-format date validation in your AppServiceProvider with the following code:

class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider   {   public function boot()   {     Validator::extend('date_multi_format', function($attribute, $value, $formats) {       // iterate through all formats       foreach($formats as $format) {          // parse date with current format         $parsed = date_parse_from_format($format, $value);          // if value matches given format return true=validation succeeded          if ($parsed['error_count'] === 0 && $parsed['warning_count'] === 0) {           return true;         }       }        // value did not match any of the provided formats, so return false=validation failed       return false;     });   } } 

You can later use this new validation rule like that:

'trep_txn_date' => 'date_multi_format:"Y-m-d H:i:s.u","Y-m-d"'  

You can read more about how to create custom validation rules here: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/validation#custom-validation-rules