Laravel Form Validator

Contents

• Introduction
• Installation
• Usage
• Example
• Tests

Introduction

After using Jeffrey Way's Generator and his Validator package for a while now I got fed up of copying and pasting the contents of the form validation files so thought I'd create my own version.

What will this do?

This package will create a form validation file containing a list or rules for the validation package to validate.

Why not just folk the generators package?

Well I still only have 3 or 4 clients as a Freelance Web Developer and this gives me the perfect opportunity to show my coding skills off. That way when people ask me if I have any work I can show them it doesn't seem like I'm making excuses when I mention "white label" and "non disclosure agreements".

Installation

Install this package through Composer.

"require-dev": {
    "grandadevans:laravel-form-validator": "~0.1.0"
}

Then include the service provider in your app/config/app.php by adding it to your "providers" array:

/*
 * app/config/app.php
 */
'providers' => array(
    #########
    'Grandadevans\GenerateForm\ServiceProvider\GenerateFormServiceProvider'
);

Don't forget that composer.json will need to know where to autoload the form from. So if the forms are kept in the default app/Forms directory you could just add it to the classMap

/*
 * composer.json
 */
"autoload": {
	"classmap": [
		"app/commands",
		"app/controllers",
		"app/models",
		"app/database/migrations",
		"app/database/seeds",
        
        "app/Forms"
    ]
}

Also: as you have changed the classMap you will have to run

composer dump-autoload

Usage

From the command line you can call the package with

php artisan generate:form

From the root directory of your Laravel installation.

Required Argument

There is only one required argument and that is the name of the form

Options

• --dir This is the directory in which the form will be saved to (defaults to app/Forms). Please make sure that the directory exists before executing the command.
• --rules This is a string representation of the rules to be used (see below).
• --namespace This is the namespace that will be given to the Form.

The Rules Option

This is where the command really comes into it's own. The rules string should be made up of the following

1. The name of the input field to validate followed by a pipe ( | )
2. A list of the conditions that the input is to validate against. Each condition being separated by another colon ( pipe* )
3. If you wish to validate another field then separate them with an ampersand ( & ) and carry on.

Example: If I wanted to validate a typical login form containing a username and password field I would set the rules option as follows

php artisan generate:form Login --rules="username|required|between:6,50|alpha & password|required|min:8"

Each condition that is entered (required, confirmed etc) will be validated against the available conditions in Laravel docs.

Once the command is executed a Form is generated and placed in the specified directory (or the default app/Forms).

Inject and Type hint the generated form into your controller (or where you wish to do your validation)

protected $loginForm;

public function __construct(LoginForm $loginForm)
{
	$this->loginForm = $loginForm;
}

Try to validate the input with

$this->loginForm->validate(Input::only(['username','password']));

Example

Let's say I want to create the above mentioned login form

Step 1: Create the form

php artisan generate|form Login --rules="username|required|between:6,50|alpha & password|required|min:8"

I can then view the form at app/Forms/FooForm.php.

<?php

use Laracasts\Validation;

/**
 *
 * Class LoginForm
 *
 */
class LoginForm extends FormValidator {

    /**
     * The array of rules to be processed
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $rules=[
        'username' => 'required|between:6,50|alpha',
        'password' => 'required|min:8',
    ];
}

Step 2: Inject the form into your controller/model

/*
 * app/controllers/LoginController.php
 */
public function LoginController extends BaseController
{

    /**
     * @var LoginForm
     */
    protected $loginForm;
    
    /**
     * @param LoginForm $loginForm
     */
    public function __construct(LoginForm $loginForm)
    {
        $this->loginForm = $loginForm;
    }

Step 3: Validate the input

    
    /**
     * Validate the login details
     */
    public function validateForm()
    {
        $input = Input::only([
            'username',
            'password'
        ]);
        
        try {
            $this->loginForm->validate($input);
        }
        
        catch(\Laracasts\Validation\FormValidationException $e) {
			return Redirect::back()->withInput()->withErrors($e->getErrors());
	}

        
    // Do something with the data
    
}

Tests

During the construction of this package I have carried out testing with

• PHPSpec - General low level tests
• Codeception - End to end test used to test from the command
• PHPUnit - Unit test used to test the command itself using Symfony's CommandTester

I also have travis monitoring the condition of the build for failures and you can check on it's progress by visiting it's Travis CI page

if you want to see the test results navigate to vendor/grandadevans/laravel-form-validator and run

composer install --dev

You can then run the tests individually

./vendor/bin/codecept run acceptance
./vendor/bin phpspec run
./vendor/bin phpunit

or you can run the test script to show all results

./runTests.sh

GitHub and Packagist

You can find this package through Github and Packagist