How to validate a string in laravel - laravel

Question

I have a textarea where a user can bulk add clients. In the textarea they would add the clients like this
client 1,client1#domain.com,client username 1
client 2,client2#domain.com,client username 2
client 3,client3#domain.com,client username 3
Here is what I have so far
public function bulkClients()
{
$bulk = request('bulk_clients');
$split = explode("\n",$bulk);
foreach($split as $row)
{
$split_row = explode(",", $row);
$name = $split_row[0];
$email = $split_row[1];
$username = $split_row[2];
$validate = Validator::make($email, [
$email => 'email',
$username => 'unique:App\User,username'
]);
if($validate->fails())
{
$messages = $validate->messages();
return response()->json([
'messages' => $messages
]);
}
}
}
What I would like to know is how can I validate that $email is an email or that $username is unique.

Answer 1

The first param of Validator::make should be an array and the second is the rules for the keys of the array.
public function bulkClients()
{
$bulk = request('bulk_clients');
$split = explode("\n",$bulk);
foreach($split as $row)
{
$split_row = explode(",", $row);
$client['name'] = $split_row[0];
$client['email'] = $split_row[1];
$client['username'] = $split_row[2];
$validate = Validator::make($client, [
'email' => 'email',
'username' => 'unique:App\User,username'
]);
if($validate->fails())
{
$messages = $validate->messages();
return response()->json([
'messages' => $messages
]);
}
}
}

Answer 2

You find all available rules in the docs:
$validate = Validator::make([ 'email' => $split_row[1],
'username' => $split_row[2]
], [
'email' => 'string',
'username' => 'unique:App\User,username'
]);
However, for email, I would rather check if its a valid email instead of a string. Thus,
'email' => 'email'
would be recommended.

Answer 3

I would suggest using the validator for the whole array instead of validating it row by row:
$clients = Str::of(request()->get('bulk_clients'))
->explode("\n")
->map(fn ($value) => Str::of($value)->explode(','))
->toArray();
$validator = Validator::make(compact('clients'), [
'clients' => 'array',
'clients.*.0' => 'required|string',
'clients.*.1' => 'required|email',
'clients.*.2' => 'required|unique:App\User,username',
]);