What does Nested Form / Field Data means in Laravel?

As a beginner, I was following along with the official doc of Laravel 9 Validation part and learned a new term called 'nested field data' or 'nested form data'.

What does it mean by this actually? How to use them? What kinda HTML Form structure should I require to get data like this?

My question might sound foolish, I might not be correct. Let me know if you need more clarification in order to answer in this regard.

[I goggled about this term but didn't find any satisfiable answer yet. So thank you in advanced for your help]

sr57

3 years ago

Best Answer

Level 39

From the doc

https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/validation#a-note-on-nested-attributes

$request->validate([
    'title' => 'required|unique:posts|max:255',
    'author.name' => 'required',
    'author.description' => 'required',
]);

and the relevant html form

<form action="..." method="post">
    <input type="text" name="title" id="title" />
    <input type="text" name="author[name]" id="authname" />
    <input type="text" name="author[description]" id="authdesc" />
    <input type="submit" ... />
</form>

name & description are "nested" attributes from author associative array.

2 likes

alnahian2003

3 years ago

Level 3

@sr57 Thanks dear. But tbh, I still didn't get the purpose for things like this. Could you please tell me, when do I need to utilize these concepts? Maybe with a more real life example, please? 😌

sr57

3 years ago

Level 39

@alnahian2003

It's totally up to you, but when you have long list of attributes, it should be easier to organize them in an associative array.

Don't use this syntax, and one day you'll think, it should be easier, more readable if ... and remember this thread :-)

1 like

alnahian2003

3 years ago

Level 3

@sr57 Hahah I'll wait for that moment.

Thanks for your replies, mate !

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