php - Can you explain the difference betwen laravels' "sometimes" and "nullable" validator on an example?

Solution:

Let's say your request contains:{name: 'value'}

I believe that:

• sometimes means that thename fields can be present or not in the request body. Means it'll pass validation even if there is noname field on the request
• nullable means that the field must be present, but the field value can benull. But in this case, you have to provide thename field even with a null value.

Let's say you have form with a particular input that is displayed only depending on previous input values. So this field is not always available: you can usesometimes as its "normal" that the user won't always submit this field. In the other hand, if the field is always displayed but not required: you'll allownull values, but not the fact that the field is missing in the body: as it may be a bot or anything else that changed your form: not correct.

Solution:

Yes there is. When u have the nullable validation rule that means that the field that it is associated with it can have a null value when it is sent making it optional but it will always be validated.

    'test_field1'            => 'nullable|integer'
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On the other hand the sometimes validation rule applies all other validation rules associated with a field only when that field is sent via the request. For example :

    'test_field1'            => 'sometimes|integer'
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This means that test_field1 will bi validated if it is an integer only when the request data has that field.

You can read more about the validation rules in the official laravel documentation : https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/validation#conditionally-adding-rules https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/validation#rule-nullable