Fluent Validation Rule Builder

A fluent interface to generate Laravel validation rules. It proxies to the built in Laravel validation rules where possible and also add some sugar such as min, max helpers, as well as a handy when method and character rule.

Installation

You can install using composer from Packagist

composer require timacdonald/rule-builder

Versioning

This package uses Semantic Versioning. You can find out more about what this is and why it matters by reading the spec or for something more readable, check out this post.

Usage

use TiMacDonald\Validation\Rule;

$rules = [
    'name' => Rule::required()
                  ->string()
                  ->max(255)
                  ->get(),

    'email' => Rule::required()
                   ->string()
                   ->email()
                   ->max(255)
                   ->unique('users')
                   ->get(),

    'password' => Rule::required()
                      ->string()
                      ->min(6)
                      ->confirmed()
                      ->get()
];

Don't forget you need to call the final get() method.

Conditional Rules

You can add rules conditionally using the when() method.

use TiMacDonald\Validation\Rule;

$rules = [
    'data' => Rule::when($requiresJson, function ($rule) {
        $rule->json();
    })->max(1000)->get()
];

Character Rule

Handy little helper that allows you to validate a single alpha character.

use TiMacDonald\Validation\Rule;

$rules = [
    'initial' => Rule::character()->get()
];

The character rule is equivalent to calling Rule::alpha()->max(1).

Min / Max Helpers

These methods allow for optional $min and / or $max arguments to help ensuring you can store the input properly in your database etc. Here is a list of the available helpers and their arguments:

use TiMacDonald\Validation\Rule;

Rule::activeUrl($max)
    ->alpha($min, $max)
    ->alphaDash($min, $max)
    ->alphaNum($min, $max)
    ->email($max)
    ->file($size)
    ->image($size)
    ->integer($min, $max)
    ->numeric($min, $max)
    ->json($max)
    ->string($min, $max)
    ->url($max);

An example of these might be:

use TiMacDonald\Validation\Rule;

$rules = [
    'age' => Rule::integer(21)->get(),
    'dollars' => Rule::numeric(0, 999.99)->get(),
    'email' => Rule::email(255)->get()
];

Proxy to Laravel Rule Classes

Laravel comes with some built in rule classes. If one is present, we simply proxy to them and keep on rocking, it's seamless. The unique rule is a built in Laravel class with a where method - check this out:

use TiMacDonald\Validation\Rule;

$rules = [
    'email' => Rule::unique('users')->where(function ($query) {
                   $query->where('account_id', 1);
               })->email(255)->get()
];

Just make sure you call any methods that apply to the proxied rule directly after the inital call to the proxy method.

Extending with Custom Rules

If you are creating your own validation rules and wish to use them with the rule builder you can simply extend the rule builder. You will want to do this in a service provider.

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use TiMacDonald\Validation\Rule;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    /**
     * Bootstrap any application services.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function boot()
    {
        Validator::extend('foo_bar', function ($attribute, $value, $parameters, $validator) {
            return $value == 'foo_bar';
        });

        Rule::extendWithRules(['foo_bar']);
    }

extendWithRules accepts either string or an array of strings in snake_case. Now we can use our foo_bar rule like so:

use TiMacDonald\Validation\Rule;

$rules = [
    'name' => Rule::string()->fooBar()->get()
];

You can even pass in values like you normally would:

use TiMacDonald\Validation\Rule;

$rules = [
    'name' => Rule::string()->fooBar('baz')->get()
];

The output of this would be "string|for_bar:baz".

Raw Rules

You can utilise rules not use setup on the rule builder by using the raw helper. For the sake of example:

$rules = [
    'email' => Rule::email()->raw('string|max:255')->get()
];

Contributing

Please feel free to suggest new ideas or send through pull requests to make this better. If you'd like to discuss the project, feel free to reach out on Twitter.

What next?

• Tests, tests, tests!
• Add ability to set default $min and $max values for rules so when you call ->email() it can default to include a max(255) rule.
• Ensure min and max do not conflict.
• Ensure only one or each rule can be added, i.e. if 2 max rules are set, the last value overwrites the first - perhaps a strict method that checks for duplicates?
• Allow extend rules to have min and max helpers.

License

This package is under the MIT License. See LICENSE file for details.