Getting subsets of validated data in Laravel 8.x
Laravel offers mainly two ways to validate the request data inside of the controller methods. Either you can directly call the validate method on the Illuminate\Http\Request object and set the validation rules or you can create a form request and type-hint the controller method with this form request class.
Here’s how you can validate request data using the first method.
public function store(Request $request)
{
$validated = $request->validate([
'title' => 'required|unique:posts',
'body' => 'required',
]);
// The book data is valid...
}
Now, if you want to retrieve the incoming request data that underwent validation, you can do so by calling the validated method on the request object like so.
$validatedData = $request->validated();
This method returns an array of the data that was validated.
So, what if you want to only retrieve a certain set of validated data? How would you do that?
Well, a recent PR by Taylor Otwell for Laravel 8.x tries to fix this.
Subsets of validated data
Laravel 8.x now comes with a safe method which you can call on a form request or validator instance. This method returns an instance of Illuminate\Support\ValidatedInput.
This object comprises of mainly three methods: only, except, and all.
- The
onlymethod
You can call this method to only retrieve certain validated fields like so.
$validated = $request->safe()->only(['title', 'body']);
In this case, only title and body fields will be retrieved.
- The
exceptmethod
$validated = $request->safe()->except(['title', 'body']);
In this case, every validated field except the title and body fields will be retrieved.
- The
allmethod
$validated = $request->safe()->all();
As its name suggests, this method will retrieve all the validated fields the same way the validated method does.
You can call the safe and all these methods on form requests the same way as the validator instance as well.
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