Laravel provides several different approaches to validate your application's incoming data. By default, Laravel's base controller class uses a ValidatesRequests trait which provides a convenient method to validate incoming HTTP request with a variety of powerful validation rules.
Available Validation Rules
Below is a list of all available validation rules and their function:
accepted
The field under validation must be yes, on, 1, or true. This is useful for validating "Terms of Service" acceptance.
active_url
The field under validation must have a valid A or AAAA record according to the dns_get_record PHP function.
after:date
The field under validation must be a value after a given date. The dates will be passed into the strtotime PHP function:
'start_date' => 'required|date|after:tomorrow'
Instead of passing a date string to be evaluated by strtotime, you may specify another field to compare against the date:
'finish_date' => 'required|date|after:start_date'
after_or_equal:date
The field under validation must be a value after or equal to the given date. For more information, see the after rule.
alpha
The field under validation must be entirely alphabetic characters.
alpha_dash
The field under validation may have alpha-numeric characters, as well as dashes and underscores.
alpha_num
The field under validation must be entirely alpha-numeric characters.
array
The field under validation must be a PHP array.
before:date
The field under validation must be a value preceding the given date. The dates will be passed into the PHP strtotime function.
before_or_equal:date
The field under validation must be a value preceding or equal to the given date. The dates will be passed into the PHP strtotime function.
between:min,max
The field under validation must have a size between the given min and max. Strings, numerics, and files are evaluated in the same fashion as the size rule.
boolean
The field under validation must be able to be cast as a boolean. Accepted input are true, false, 1, 0, "1", and "0".
confirmed
The field under validation must have a matching field of foo_confirmation. For example, if the field under validation is password, a matching password_confirmation field must be present in the input.
date
The field under validation must be a valid date according to the strtotime PHP function.
date_format:format
The field under validation must match the given format. You should use either date or date_format when validating a field, not both.
different:field
The field under validation must have a different value than field.
digits:value
The field under validation must be numeric and must have an exact length of value.
digits_between:min,max
The field under validation must have a length between the given min and max.
dimensions
The file under validation must be an image meeting the dimension constraints as specified by the rule's parameters:
'avatar' => 'dimensions:min_width=100,min_height=200'
Available constraints are: min_width, max_width, min_height, max_height, width, height, ratio.
A ratio constraint should be represented as width divided by height. This can be specified either by a statement like 3/2 or a float like 1.5:
'avatar' => 'dimensions:ratio=3/2'
Since this rule requires several arguments, you may use the Rule::dimensions method to fluently construct the rule:
use Illuminate\Validation\Rule;
Validator::make($data, [
'avatar' => [
'required',
Rule::dimensions()->maxWidth(1000)->maxHeight(500)->ratio(3 / 2),
],
]);
distinct
When working with arrays, the field under validation must not have any duplicate values.
'foo.*.id' => 'distinct'
email
The field under validation must be formatted as an e-mail address.
exists:table,column
The field under validation must exist on a given database table.
Basic Usage Of Exists Rule
'state' => 'exists:states'
Specifying A Custom Column Name
'state' => 'exists:states,abbreviation'
Occasionally, you may need to specify a specific database connection to be used for the exists query. You can accomplish this by prepending the connection name to the table name using "dot" syntax:
'email' => 'exists:connection.staff,email'
If you would like to customize the query executed by the validation rule, you may use the Rule class to fluently define the rule. In this example, we'll also specify the validation rules as an array instead of using the | character to delimit them:
use Illuminate\Validation\Rule;
Validator::make($data, [
'email' => [
'required',
Rule::exists('staff')->where(function ($query) {
$query->where('account_id', 1);
}),
],
]);
file
The field under validation must be a successfully uploaded file.
filled
The field under validation must not be empty when it is present.
image
The file under validation must be an image (jpeg, png, bmp, gif, or svg)
in:foo,bar,...
The field under validation must be included in the given list of values. Since this rule often requires you to implode an array, the Rule::in method may be used to fluently construct the rule:
use Illuminate\Validation\Rule;
Validator::make($data, [
'zones' => [
'required',
Rule::in(['first-zone', 'second-zone']),
],
]);
in_array:anotherfield
The field under validation must exist in anotherfield's values.
integer
The field under validation must be an integer.
ip
The field under validation must be an IP address.
ipv4
The field under validation must be an IPv4 address.
ipv6
The field under validation must be an IPv6 address.
json
The field under validation must be a valid JSON string.
max:value
The field under validation must be less than or equal to a maximum value. Strings, numerics, and files are evaluated in the same fashion as the size rule.
mimetypes:text/plain,...
The file under validation must match one of the given MIME types:
'video' => 'mimetypes:video/avi,video/mpeg,video/quicktime'
To determine the MIME type of the uploaded file, the file's contents will be read and the framework will attempt to guess the MIME type, which may be different from the client provided MIME type.
mimes:foo,bar,...
The file under validation must have a MIME type corresponding to one of the listed extensions.
Basic Usage Of MIME Rule
'photo' => 'mimes:jpeg,bmp,png'
Even though you only need to specify the extensions, this rule actually validates against the MIME type of the file by reading the file's contents and guessing its MIME type.
A full listing of MIME types and their corresponding extensions may be found at the following location: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/trunk/docs/conf/mime.types
min:value
The field under validation must have a minimum value. Strings, numerics, and files are evaluated in the same fashion as the size rule.
nullable
The field under validation may be null. This is particularly useful when validating primitive such as strings and integers that can contain null values.
not_in:foo,bar,...
The field under validation must not be included in the given list of values.
numeric
The field under validation must be numeric.
present
The field under validation must be present in the input data but can be empty.
regex:pattern
The field under validation must match the given regular expression.
Note: When using the regex pattern, it may be necessary to specify rules in an array instead of using pipe delimiters, especially if the regular expression contains a pipe character.
required
The field under validation must be present in the input data and not empty. A field is considered "empty" if one of the following conditions are true:
The value is null.
The value is an empty string.
The value is an empty array or empty Countable object.
The value is an uploaded file with no path.
required_if:anotherfield,value,...
The field under validation must be present and not empty if the anotherfield field is equal to any value.
required_unless:anotherfield,value,...
The field under validation must be present and not empty unless the anotherfield field is equal to any value.
required_with:foo,bar,...
The field under validation must be present and not empty only if any of the other specified fields are present.
required_with_all:foo,bar,...
The field under validation must be present and not empty only if all of the other specified fields are present.
required_without:foo,bar,...
The field under validation must be present and not empty only when any of the other specified fields are not present.
required_without_all:foo,bar,...
The field under validation must be present and not empty only when all of the other specified fields are not present.
same:field
The given field must match the field under validation.
size:value
The field under validation must have a size matching the given value. For string data, value corresponds to the number of characters. For numeric data, value corresponds to a given integer value. For an array, size corresponds to the count of the array. For files, size corresponds to the file size in kilobytes.
string
The field under validation must be a string. If you would like to allow the field to also be null, you should assign the nullable rule to the field.
timezone
The field under validation must be a valid timezone identifier according to the timezone_identifiers_list PHP function.
unique:table,column,except,idColumn
The field under validation must be unique in a given database table. If the column option is not specified, the field name will be used.
Specifying A Custom Column Name:
'email' => 'unique:users,email_address'
Custom Database Connection
Occasionally, you may need to set a custom connection for database queries made by the Validator. As seen above, setting unique:users as a validation rule will use the default database connection to query the database. To override this, specify the connection and the table name using "dot" syntax:
'email' => 'unique:connection.users,email_address'
Forcing A Unique Rule To Ignore A Given ID:
Sometimes, you may wish to ignore a given ID during the unique check. For example, consider an "update profile" screen that includes the user's name, e-mail address, and location. Of course, you will want to verify that the e-mail address is unique. However, if the user only changes the name field and not the e-mail field, you do not want a validation error to be thrown because the user is already the owner of the e-mail address.
To instruct the validator to ignore the user's ID, we'll use the Rule class to fluently define the rule. In this example, we'll also specify the validation rules as an array instead of using the | character to delimit the rules:
use Illuminate\Validation\Rule;
Validator::make($data, [
'email' => [
'required',
Rule::unique('users')->ignore($user->id),
],
]);
If your table uses a primary key column name other than id, you may specify the name of the column when calling the ignore method:
'email' => Rule::unique('users')->ignore($user->id, 'user_id')
Adding Additional Where Clauses:
You may also specify additional query constraints by customizing the query using the where method. For example, let's add a constraint that verifies the account_id is 1:
'email' => Rule::unique('users')->where(function ($query) {
$query->where('account_id', 1);
})
url
The field under validation must be a valid URL.
