Validation

Monarch provides a validation framework that allows you to validate your data against a set of rules. It is a wrapper around the Somnambulist Validation library, which provides a flexible, Laravel-like validation system, with no dependencies.

Tip

There are many more details in the Somnambulist Validation documentation about using the library directly and customizing it. This documentation will focus on the Monarch integration and basic usage.

Info

The validation system is available via the validation() helper function. This function returns an instance of the Validation class. The Validation class is a singleton, so you can use the helper function to access the same instance throughout your application. This is the method these examples will use.

If you prefer to use the Validation class directly, you can use the Validation::instance() method to get a singleton instance manually.

use Monarch\Validation;

$validator = Validation::instance();
Validation::instance()->make($data, $rules)->validate();
Validation::instance()->errors();

Basic Usage

There are two ways to use the validation system: either the make() or validate methods. The make() method creates a new instance of the validator, and then you'll manually call the validate() method.

validation()->make($_POST + $_FILES, [
    'name'                  => 'required',
    'email'                 => 'required|email',
    'password'              => 'required|min:6',
    'confirm_password'      => 'required|same:password',
    'avatar'                => 'required|uploaded_file:0,500K,png,jpeg',
    'skills'                => 'array',
    'skills.*.id'           => 'required|numeric',
    'skills.*.percentage'   => 'required|numeric'
]);
validation()->validate();

The second way is to use the validate() method directly. This method will create a new instance of the validator and validate the data in one go.

validation()->validate($_POST + $_FILES, [
    'name'                  => 'required',
    'email'                 => 'required|email',
    'password'              => 'required|min:6',
    'confirm_password'      => 'required|same:password',
    'avatar'                => 'required|uploaded_file:0,500K,png,jpeg',
    'skills'                => 'array',
    'skills.*.id'           => 'required|numeric',
    'skills.*.percentage'   => 'required|numeric'
]);

Validated, Valid, and Invalid Data

After validating, the validation object contains all of the results.

$input = validation()->validate($_POST + $_FILES, [
    'title' => 'required',
    'body' => 'required',
    'published' => 'default:1|required|in:0,1',
    'something' => 'required|numeric'
]);

// Returns all of the data that was validated
$validation->getValidatedData();
// [
//     'title' => 'Lorem Ipsum',
//     'body' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet ...',
//     'published' => '1' // notice this
//     'something' => '-invalid-'
// ]

$validation->getValidData();
// [
//     'title' => 'Lorem Ipsum',
//     'body' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet ...',
//     'published' => '1'
// ]

$validation->getInvalidData();
// [
//     'something' => '-invalid-'
// ]

Error Messages

Error messages are collected in an ErrorBag instance that you can access via errors() on the validation instance.

use Somnambulist\Components\Validation\Factory;

$validation = validation()->validate($inputs, $rules);

$errors = $validation->errors();

The error bag supports the following methods:

// Get all errors
$errors->all();
// Get the first message of all existing keys
$errors->firstOfAll();
// Get the first message for a given key
$errors->first('key');
// Get all errors as an associative array
$errors->toArray();
// Count the errors
$errors->count();
// Check if the given key has an error
$errors->has('key');

Custom Validation Rules

If you would like to add custom validation rules, you can do so by creating a new rule class as described in the library documentation. Once you have created your rule you can add register it in the config/app.php file.

return [
    ...
    'validationRules' => [
        'custom_rule' => \App\Rules\CustomRule::class,
    ],
];

Monarch will then ensure that the rule is registered with the underlying library and available for use in your validation rules.