Separate classes for Validation Rules

[pxlrbt]

Hey,

Laravel and PHP get safer to use with every release. We have Enums and use classes a lot more for configuration then strings nowadays. But we still have this set up strings to define Validation Rules. Extra arguments are chained onto the string which makes it even worse.

I'd love to see rules move to their own classes. This gives us auto-completion, less typos and methods to configure the rules. Using the example from the docs, we could transform this:

$request->validate([
  'title' => 'required|unique:posts|max:255',
  'body' => 'required',
]);

to this:

use \Illuminate\Validation\Rules;

$request->validate([
  'title' => [
    new Rules\Required,
    new Rules\Unique(table: 'posts'),
    new Rules\Max(limit: 255)
  ],
  'body' => new Rules\Required,
]);

What are your thoughts on this?

[shaedrich]

It already is possible in many, but not all, cases:

via Illuminate\Validation\Rule::*:

• unique
• exists
• in
• notIn
• requiredIf
• excludeIf
• prohibitedIf
• enum

via Illuminate\Validation\Rules\*:

• Can
• DatabaseRule
• Dimensions
• Enum
• ExcludeIf
• Exists
• File
• ImageFile
• In
• NotIn
• Password
• ProhibitedIf
• RequiredIf
• Unique

But yeah, it would be easier if one didn't have to look up whether a certain rule already has a class or not.

[pxlrbt]

Yeah, figured that out as well. So should be acceptable to PR the missing classes I guess.

[shaedrich]

Acceptable, sure. If Taylor is in the mood to accept it, who knows 🤷🏻