How to make Laravel's Validator $rules optional?

Question

Let\'s say I have User model with two methods:

User.php

class User extends Eloquent
{  
    /* Validation rules */
             


        

Answer 1

Not sure if I'm getting your question right but if the user is optional you should remove 'required' from the validator. This way you will have:

'user'  => 'unique:users|alpha_num',

instead of:

'user'  => 'unique:users|required|alpha_num',

On the other hand I create a custom method for my models that is able to return custom validation rules depending on incoming parameters.

For example:

private function getValidationRules($rules)
{
    if ($rules == UPDATE_EMAIL)
    {
        return array('email' => 'required|email');
    } else {
        return array(
            'user'  => 'unique:users|required|alpha_num',
            'email' => 'required|email'
        );
    }
}

I guess it's only a personal choice, but I have found that getting the validation rules from a method allows more control over what I really want to validate, especially when you want to perform some advanced validations.

Hope it helps you.