Intuitive way to nest validation rules?

[h-sigma]

Hi, I don't use DTOs much in my workflow except for the json columns in my tables. Since these json columns are part of the create/update requests (usually), I need to manually grab the validation rules for the data class and prepend the nesting to the array keys (e.g. if the data class represents the question_data column, I'd prepend question_data. to each of the generated validation rules, and use those manually in my request validator, followed by creating the data class instance manually using from or validationAndCreate). This is important for providing validation errors at the correct nesting.

If you overload fromRequest, you can change the mapping of the input data to the data class, but that doesn't seem to affect the generated validation rules.

I could create a DTO that represents the request as a whole, but the problem with that approach is that sometimes the json data is polymorphic (multiple data classes could be used).

Perhaps adding a new annotation?

[h-sigma]

function validate_nested_dto(
        string $class,
        string $nestedKey,
        array $additionalRules = [],
        bool $payload = false
    ): mixed {
        abort_unless(is_subclass_of($class, Data::class), 500, 'Internal server error.');
        abort_unless(method_exists($class, 'getValidationRules'), 500, 'Internal server error.');
        $nestedKey = str_ends_with($nestedKey, '.') ? substr($nestedKey, 0, -1) : $nestedKey;

        $rules = $payload ? $class::getValidationRules(request()) : $class::getValidationRules();
        $rules = collect($rules)->mapWithKeys(fn(
            $value,
            $key
        ) => ["$nestedKey.$key" => $value])->toArray();
        $rules[$nestedKey] = ['array', ...$additionalRules];
        $validated = request()->validate($rules);

        $dtoPayload = data_get($validated, $nestedKey);
        if($dtoPayload === null) {
            return null;
        }
        // abort_if($dtoPayload === null && !in_array('nullable', $additionalRules), 500, 'Internal server error.');
        try {
            return $class::validateAndCreate($dtoPayload);
        } catch (ValidationException $e) {
            throw ValidationException::withMessages(collect($e->errors())->mapWithKeys(static fn(
                $value,
                $key
            ) => [(str_starts_with($key, $nestedKey) ? $key : "$nestedKey.$key") => $value])->toArray());
        }
    }

It's not pretty, but this is what I have at the moment. (I call validateAndCreate instead of from when creating the DTO in case the data class implements withValidator and overrides the validator)