Merge Form Request Validation for store and update - laravel

Question

I am using Request validation to validate the user's input.
This is UpdateUser:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Requests;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest;
use Illuminate\Support\Arr;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Gate;
class UpdateUser extends FormRequest
{
/**
* Determine if the user is authorized to make this request.
*
* #return bool
*/
public function authorize()
{
return Gate::allows('update-user');
}
/**
* Get the validation rules that apply to the request.
*
* #return array
*/
public function rules()
{
$user_id = Arr::get($this->request->get('user'), 'id');
return [
'user.firstname' => 'required|string|max:255',
'user.lastname' => 'required|string|max:255',
'user.email' => "required|string|email|max:255|unique:users,email,{$user_id}",
'user.password' => 'sometimes|nullable|string|min:4|confirmed',
];
}
}
As you can see, there is some update-specific stuff happening:
The authorize() method checks whether the user is allowed to update-user and inside the rules I am excluding the row of the current user from being unique:
'user.email' => "required|string|email|max:255|unique:users,email,{$user_id}",
As I would like to merge UpdateUser and StoreUser, what would be the most efficient and readable way to determine, whether I am updating or saving?
This is my current approach:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Requests;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest;
use Illuminate\Support\Arr;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Gate;
class UpdateUser extends FormRequest
{
/**
* Determine if the user is authorized to make this request.
*
* #return bool
*/
public function authorize()
{
if($this->isUpdating())
{
return Gate::allows('update-user');
}
return Gate::allows('create-user');
}
/**
* Get the validation rules that apply to the request.
*
* #return array
*/
public function rules()
{
if($this->isUpdating()){
$user_id = Arr::get($this->request->get('user'), 'id');
return [
...
];
}
return [];
}
/**
* #return bool
*/
protected function isUpdating(){
return $this->isMethod('put') || $this->isMethod('patch');
}
}
I am wondering if I may extend the FormRequest class and provide isUpdating() by default.

Answer 1

Your update and store method are not the same request type, you have PUT and PATCH method on your request instance, so you can check the request type as like :
switch ($request->method()) {
case 'PATCH':
// do anything in 'patch request';
break;
case 'PUT':
// do anything in 'put request';
break;
default:
// invalid request
break;
}

Answer 2

I learnt about a new approach to validation some time ago using separate validator class and I kinda like it a lot. Let me show you
Create a directory Validators and a class inside UserValidator
class UserValidator
{
public function rules(User $user)
{
return [
'user.firstname' => [
'required',
'string',
'max:255',
],
'user.lastname' => [
'required',
'string',
'max:255',
],
'user.email' => [
$user->exists ? 'sometimes' : null,
'required',
'string',
'email',
'max:255',
Rule::unique('users', 'email')->ignore($user->exists ? $user->id : null)
],
'user.password' => [
$user->exists ? 'sometimes' : null,
'required',
'string',
'min:8'
],
];
}
public function validate(array $data, User $user)
{
return validator($data, $this->rules($user))
//->after(function ($validator) use ($data, $user) {
// Custom validation here if need be
//})
->validate();
}
}
Then authorization can be done in Controller
class UserController
{
use AuthorizesRequests;
/**
* #param Request $request
*/
public function store(Request $request)
{
$this->authorize('create_user', User::class);
$data = (new UserValidator())->validate(
$request->all(),
$user = new User()
);
$user->fill($data)->save();
}
/**
* #param Request $request
* #param \App\user $user
*/
public function update(Request $request, User $user)
{
$this->authorize('update_user', $user);
$data = (new UserValidator())->validate(
$request->all(),
$user
);
$user->fill($data)->save();
}
}
This was proposed and explained by (twitter handle) #themsaid