php - Form request validation in Laravel: required depending on the method (POST, PUT or DELETE)

Solution:

I faced this problem lots of times and I understand your frustration...

From my point of view and professional experience, the best solution was all the time to have specificFormRequests for each case:

• One forstore with its own rules
• Other forupdate with similar rules but not same asstore
• And last one fordelete (for sure way less rules than the others and no duplication)

I know you said "no code duplication", but as it is right now, that is not possible (but you should not have code duplication as I stated before).

You said "as long as it is clean and follows SOLID principles", remember SOLID, S = Single Responsability, so if you want to solve this issue with a singleFormRequest you are already breakingS. I cannot image aFormRequest with 10 or 15 inputs and those depends on if it isstore,update, ordelete. That is going to not be clean and for sure will not follow SOLID principles.

Solution:

What about checking the method and then returning a set of rules based on that method? For instance, I have an InvoiceFormRequest with the following rules. So I'm able to use one form request for two different methods.

/**
* Get the validation rules that apply to the request.
*
* @return array
*/
public function rules()
{
    if ($this->isMethod('post')) {
        return [
           'template' => 'required',
           'due_by_date'   => 'required',
           'description'   => 'required',
           'charge_items'  => 'required',
        ];
    }

    if ($this->isMethod('put')) {
        return [
            'due_by_date'   => 'required',
            'description'   => 'required',
            'charge_items'  => 'required',
        ];
    }
}
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Solution:

Here are two possible solutions that I came up with

1. Use the controller method for returning the proper validation rules:

    public function rules()
    {
        $method = $this->route()->getActionMethod();

        switch($method){
            case 'store':
                return [
                    \\ validation rules
                ]
            ...
        }
    }
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2. Use$this->getMethod() instead of$this->route()->getActionMethod() and validate by HTTP methods instead.

You could also store your validation rules in an array and manipulate it to reduce code duplication.

This resolves the issue of code duplication to a good extent, I think.