How to validate this context? In the validate method()? - laravel

Question

Context: When a user creates a new conference he needs to select a start and an end date for the conference and the user needs to enter an end date after the start date, that is, the end date needs to be after the start date.
To deal with this logic properly, do you know if we can use the laravel validate method in the store method or is not a good approach or not possible do with this method? If it is not adequate to do this in the validate method do you know how to properly do that?
ConferenceController store method:
public function store(Request $request)
{
$this->validate($request, [
'conference_name' => 'required|max:255|string',
'conference_startDate' => 'required|date_format:d/m/Y',
'conference_endDate' => 'required|date_format:d/m/Y',
]);
$conference = Conference::create([
'nome' => $request->conference_name,
'startDate' => Carbon::parse($request->conference_startDate),
'endDate' => Carbon::parse($request->conference_endDate),
]);
}
Html fields:
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-6">
<label for="conference_startDate">Stard Date</label>
<div class="input-group date" data-provide="datepicker">
<input type='text' onkeydown="event.preventDefault()"
name="conference_startDate" value="{{ old('conference_startDate') }}"
class="form-control" placeholder="DD/MM/YYY" />
<span class="input-group-addon"><i class="fa fa-calendar text-primary" aria-hidden="true"></i></span>
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-6">
<label for="conference_endDate">End Date</label>
<div class="input-group date" data-provide="datepicker">
<input type='text' class="form-control"
value="{{ old('conference_endDate') }}" name="conference_endDate" placeholder="DD/MM/YYY"/>
<span class="input-group-addon"><i class="fa fa-calendar text-primary" aria-hidden="true"></i></span>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Answer 1

As stated in the documentation, you could use the after rule:
after:date
The field under validation must be a value after a given date. The
dates will be passed into the strtotime PHP function:
'start_date' => 'required|date|after:tomorrow'
Instead of passing a
date string to be evaluated by strtotime, you may specify another
field to compare against the date:
'finish_date' => 'required|date|after:start_date'
So in your code:
$this->validate($request, [
'conference_name' => 'required|max:255|string',
'conference_startDate' => 'required|date_format:d/m/Y',
'conference_endDate' => 'required|date_format:d/m/Y|after:conference_startDate',
]);
Also, check this similar question.
Update
To check for a date after of equal another date, as stated in the docs, you should use:
after_or_equal:date
The field under validation must be a value after
or equal to the given date. For more information, see the after rule.