Laravel unique validation rule ignore for array incoming data

Question

'email' => 'required|unique:users,email,'.$user->id

We all know that while we update an instance in database we should ignore its id when we are using unique validation rule, like the above example.
Now in my application I have an Agency model and an Employee model and each Agency has many Employee.
In my application I have a form to create and update Agencies and Employees.
Data sent by this form :

$request->validate([
    'agency.name' => 'required|string',
    'agency.phone' => 'required|string|unique:agencies,phone,'.$agency->id,
    .
    .
    .
    'employees.*.first_name' => 'required|string',
    'employees.*.last_name' => 'required|string',
    'employees.*.email' => 'required|unique:employees,email'
]);

Now, validating agency.phone is quite easy, because we only have 1 agency and we can easily pass $agency->id to ignore unique validation rule for this instance.

'agency.phone' => 'required|string|unique:agencies,phone,'.$agency->id

Now the problem that I'm facing is that I have multiple employees in my incoming data and I cannot use an id to ignore

'employees.*.email' => 'required|unique:employees,email' // cannot add $employee->id here in order to ignore while updating

I do have id of each employee in my incoming data, so how can I use it to ignore laravel validation rule for array incoming data like in this example?

HELP
The output of dd($request->all()) is :

array:2 [
  "agency" => array:7 [
    "id" => 5
    "name" => "xxxxxxx"
    "manager_name" => null
    "manager_phone" => null
    "phone" => null
    "created_at" => "2020-10-23T00:53:13.000000Z"
    "updated_at" => "2020-10-23T00:53:13.000000Z"
  ]
  "employees" => array:1 [
    0 => array:6 [
      "id" => 1
      "first_name" => "John"
      "last_name" => "Doe"
      "email" => "[email protected]"
      "created_at" => "2020-10-23T00:53:13.000000Z"
      "updated_at" => "2020-10-23T00:53:13.000000Z"
    ]
  ]
]

You can use custom validation rule, do you have all employee id's as an array? — STA
– STA, Commented Oct 23, 2020 at 5:08
I updated the question you can see incoming data from my form @sta — eylay
– eylay, Commented Oct 23, 2020 at 5:10
Try this 'employees.*.email' =>['required', Rule::unique( 'employees')->ignore( 'employees.*.id') ], — STA
– STA, Commented Oct 23, 2020 at 5:46
This may also work 'employees.*.email' => 'required|unique:employees,email,' . 'employees.*.id', — STA
– STA, Commented Oct 23, 2020 at 5:59
@sta you should never pass user data to the ignore, this will make it vulnerable to an SQL injection attack. — frogeyedman
– frogeyedman, Commented Oct 23, 2020 at 6:56

acvi · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-24 09:33:26Z

Just validate twice! :)

You could first validate all the things that don't require you to know the Employee IDs. Like so:

<?php

$request->validate([
    'agency.name' => 'required|string',
    'agency.phone' => 'required|string|unique:agencies,phone,'.$agency->id,
    // ...
    'employees.*.first_name' => 'required|string',
    'employees.*.last_name' => 'required|string',
    'employees.*.email' => 'required'
]);

Then you could do a foreach loop over the employee IDs, and construct your unique email rules. Assuming you have your Employee IDs in a variable like $ids and they are ordered the same way as your request data, you could do something like this:

<?php

$uniqueEmailRules = [];
foreach($ids as $key => $id) {
    $uniqueEmailRules['employees.' . $key . '.email'] = 'unique:employees,email,' . $id;
}

$request->validate($uniqueEmailRules);

karatecode · Accepted Answer · 2022-11-23 15:00:29Z

1

To avoid validating twice, you can do something like:

$request->validate([
    'employees.*.email' => Rule::forEach(function ($value, $attribute, $data) {
        $idKey = Str::replace('email', 'id', $attribute);
        return [
            'email', 'required', Rule::unique('employees')->ignore($data[$idKey])
        ];
    }),
]);

Within the callback, $value will give you the email address you're validating, $attribute will give you the key of the validation array eg employees.1.email and then $data gives you all of the validation entries for that rule.

edited Nov 23, 2022 at 15:00

answered Nov 23, 2022 at 14:50

karatecode

6049 silver badges23 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Laravel unique validation rule ignore for array incoming data

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related