Validation

No matter how an action is run, you can define some validation logic directly within the action to ensure the provided attributes are what they are expected to be.

Note that, just like in a Laravel FormRequest, the validation logic occurs after the authorisation logic (see previous page).

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The page "The lifecycle of an action" provides a handy summary of all methods that an Action will call before and after executing the handle method.

Defining the validation rules

Just like in a Laravel FormRequest, you can define your validation logic using the rules and withValidator methods.

The rules method enables you to list validation rules for your action's attributes.

public function rules()
{
    return [
        'title' => ['required'],
        'body' => ['required', 'min:10'],
    ];
}

The withValidator method provide a convenient way to add custom validation logic.

public function withValidator($validator)
{
    $validator->after(function ($validator) {
        if ($this->somethingElseIsInvalid()) {
            $validator->errors()->add('field', 'Something is wrong with this field!');
        }
    });
}

If all you want to do is add an after validation hook, you can use the afterValidator method instead of the withValidator method. The following example is equivalent to the one above.

public function afterValidator($validator)
{
    if ($this->somethingElseIsInvalid()) {
        $validator->errors()->add('field', 'Something is wrong with this field!');
    };
}

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It is worth noting that, just like the handle method, the rules, withValidator and afterValidator methods support dependency injections.

If you want to validate some data directly within the handle method, you can use the validate method.

public function handle()
{
    $this->validate([
        'comment' => ['required', 'min:10', 'spamfree'],
    ]);
}

This will validate the provided rules against the action's attributes.

Handling failed validation

Whenever validation fails, it will throw an ValidationException resulting in a 422 status code when used in the HTTP layer (as a controller for example).

You can change that behaviour by overriding the failedValidation method.

protected function failedValidation()
{
    throw new MyCustomExceptionForInvalidData();
}

Accessing validated data

If you want to access all attributes that have been validated prior to reaching the handle method, you can use $this->validated() instead of $this->all().

public function rules()
{
    return ['title' => 'min:3'];
}

public function handle()
{
    // Will only return attributes that have been validated by the rules above.
    $this->validated();
}

Customising validation texts

You can customise the validation texts using the messages and attributes methods.

public function messages()
{
    return [];
}

public function attributes()
{
    return [];
}

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It is worth noting that, just like the handle method, the messages, attributes methods support dependency injections.