Custom FormRequest validation without DI

@ds_one

Yes, you can write manual validation https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/validation#manually-creating-validators

Yes, I am aware of those docs, but they do not mention the custom FormRequest instance and that is my issue.

The code example is:

$validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
            'title' => 'required|unique:posts|max:255',
            'body' => 'required',
        ]);

How do I get my CustomFormRequest in there without using DI? That's the question.

I could get the rules() from my CustomFormRequest via app(MyCustomRequest::class)->rules(), not knowing if this is the right approach. BUT it doesn't return the sometimes() conditions that are defined inside CustomFormRequest->validator() but I cannot invoke that function instead of rules() as I need to provide a factory parameter and I do not know what that is.

What I need to achieve in some way is this:

$validator = Validator::make($request->all(), CustomFormRequest::class);
if ($validator->fails()) {
	
}

The docs do not mention that or I am blind. Did I missing something there?

@ds_one

rules() are usually just

    public function rules()
    {
        return [
            'email' => 'required|email|unique:users',
            'name' => 'required|string|max:50',
            'password' => 'required'
        ];
    }

It is odd that yours somehow strips out sometimes condition. Are you sure they are specified in the custom request class?

You can convert to a custom form request this way, try

$CustomFormRequest = CustomFormRequest::createFrom($request);
if ($CustomFormRequest->getValidatorInstance()->fails()) {
    ...
}

I wasn't aware of the casting of requests to other types of requests like this. That's neat, thanks! However, getValidatorInstance()is a protected function and I cannot call it in my Controller. Overwriting it in my CustomFormRequest to make it public and returning parent::getValidatorInstance() as well as simply returning$this->validator yields no results. The latter is empty, the former complains about Call to a member function make() on null inside FormRequest.php which is the line $factory = $this->container->make(ValidationFactory::class);.

My sometimes conditions are defined in the validator function not the rule array:

public function validator(Factory $factory) {
	$validator = $factory->make($this->input(), $this->rules(), $this->messages());

	$validator->sometimes('request_variable', 'required|numeric', function($input) {
		return $input->conditionXY == true;
	});

	// ...
}

when I tried to simply load the ->rules() from my CustomFormRequest these sometimes conditions were never triggered, which makes sense considering the rules function is called and not the validator function. I'd have to convert the sometimes rules in the rules array, like described here: https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/validation#conditionally-adding-rules

Perhaps then it works as intended. That means converting a dozen form requests, kinda limiting the usage of custom form requests to the rules() function. Hm.

Why can you not do the switch in the request class?

The rules() method returns an array. That does not need to be all it does.

The returned rules array can be built on the fly based on other aspects of the request.

@ds_one

You can put sometimes in your rules https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/validation#validating-when-present

    $CustomFormRequest = CustomFormRequest::createFrom($request);
    $validator = Validator::make($request->all(), $CustomFormRequest->rules());
    ...

@snapey That would mean I have a single gigantic god object dealing with the validation of a dozen similarish but quite different form requests where I'd put a couple dozen if conditions to build up the needed validation rules. Frankly, that doesn't sound maintainable nor like a good approach at all to me. Hence the attempt at dynamically applying different CustomFormRequests to the incoming request.

@laracoft Yes, that's the approach I am going for now, after moving the sometime definitions accordingly. Thanks for pushing me in the right direction!

@ds_one glad you are moving forward. Do pick an answer that helped you best. Thank you.