Laravel 5.1 date_format validation allow two formats

Question

I use following date validation for incoming POST request.

\'trep_txn_date\' => \'date_format:\"Y-m-d H:i:s.u\"\'

This will only allow a

Answer 1

The date_format validator takes only one date format as parameter. In order to be able to use multiple formats, you'll need to build a custom validation rule. Luckily, it's pretty simple.

You can define the multi-format date validation in your AppServiceProvider with the following code:

class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider  
{
  public function boot()
  {
    Validator::extend('date_multi_format', function($attribute, $value, $formats) {
      // iterate through all formats
      foreach($formats as $format) {

        // parse date with current format
        $parsed = date_parse_from_format($format, $value);

        // if value matches given format return true=validation succeeded 
        if ($parsed['error_count'] === 0 && $parsed['warning_count'] === 0) {
          return true;
        }
      }

      // value did not match any of the provided formats, so return false=validation failed
      return false;
    });
  }
}

You can later use this new validation rule like that:

'trep_txn_date' => 'date_multi_format:"Y-m-d H:i:s.u","Y-m-d"' 

You can read more about how to create custom validation rules here: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/validation#custom-validation-rules