JSON errors of LoginController and RegisterController should be strings not arrays - laravel

Question

I am using Laravel 5.5.14 (php artisan --version). I am using Laravel to create just a REST API.
When I get errors, the shape of it looks like this:
[
'message' => 'The given data was invalid.',
'errors' => [
'email' => ['The email field is required.'],
'password' => ['The password field is required.']
]
]
My
We see inside the errors array, each field (email, password) instead of being strings, is an array of a single string. Can there ever be more then one error is this why it is an array? Even if there is more then one error, I wanted to tell Laravel just report the first error without an array, is this possible?
In my api.php I have this:
Route::post('login', 'Auth\LoginController#login');
Route::post('logout', 'Auth\LoginController#logout');
Route::post('register', 'Auth\RegisterController#register');
My LoginController.php looks like this:
public function __construct()
{
$this->middleware('guest')->except('logout');
}
public function login(Request $request)
{
$this->validateLogin($request);
if ($this->attemptLogin($request)) {
$user = $this->guard()->user()->load('pets');
$user->generateToken();
return $user;
}
return $this->sendFailedLoginResponse($request);
}
public function logout(Request $request)
{
$user = Auth::guard('api')->user();
if ($user) {
$user->api_token = null;
$user->save();
}
return ['ok' => true];
}
And my RegisterController.php looks like this:
public function __construct()
{
$this->middleware('guest');
}
/**
* The user has been registered.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #param mixed $user
* #return mixed
*/
protected function registered(Request $request, $user)
{
$user->generateToken();
return response()->json($user, 201);
}
/**
* Get a validator for an incoming registration request.
*
* #param array $data
* #return \Illuminate\Contracts\Validation\Validator
*/
protected function validator(array $data)
{
return Validator::make($data, [
'name' => 'required|string|max:255',
'email' => 'required|string|email|max:255|unique:users',
'password' => 'required|string|min:6|confirmed',
]);
}
/**
* Create a new user instance after a valid registration.
*
* #param array $data
* #return \App\User
*/
protected function create(array $data)
{
return User::create([
'name' => $data['name'],
'email' => $data['email'],
'password' => bcrypt($data['password']),
]);
}

Answer 1

Override validateLogin to the following or you could give it a different name and call it from your controller function-
public function validateLogin($request){
$rules = [
'user_name' => 'required|string',
'password' => 'required|string',
];
$validator = Validator::make($request->all(), $rules);
if ($validator->fails()) {
$errorResponse = $this->validationErrorsToString($validator->errors());
return response()->json(['message' => 'The given data was invalid.', 'errors' => $errorResponse],400);
}
}
And make another function to transform your response to expected format with this method-
private function validationErrorsToString($errArray) {
$valArr = array();
foreach ($errArray->toArray() as $key => $value) {
$valArr[$key] = $value[0];
}
return $valArr;
}
And don't forget to add this at the start of your controller file-
use Validator;
Hope this helps you :)

Answer 2

From the docs:
The $errors variable will be an instance of Illuminate\Support\MessageBag
An example of displaying errors from the docs:
#if ($errors->any())
<div class="alert alert-danger">
<ul>
#foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
<li>{{ $error }}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
</div>
#endif