Laravel. How to apply two conditions "required_if" inside "FormRequest" where fields look like "books*pages*color"?

Question

I have multiple validated fields like this:

books.*.id
books.*.pages.*.color
books.*.pages.*.number
authors.*.books.*.id
authors.*.books.*.name

I need two required_if conditions for one field (like this):

'books.*.pages.*.color' => [
   'required_if:books.*.id,10',
   'required_if:authors.*.books.*.id,20'
],

Both required_if should be applied at the same time (via AND condition). If only one than 'books..pages..color' should not be required.

And one more condition, If we are checking 'books..pages..color' in a cycle, like foreach() our validator should use the same nested array indexes like this:

'books.3.pages.7.color' => [
   'required_if:books.3.id,10',
   'required_if:authors.1.books.3.id,20'
],

How can I do this?

Answer 1

The required_if does not support ANDing, instead, you can use conditionally added rules, and you can override your getValidatorInstance to use it. However, this solution also needs the validation to be aware of index, so we cant use conditionally added rules.

There is a cool solution in the comments for index aware conditionally added rule, however I couldn't get it to work with a deeply nested rule, using one of the upper indexes.

For highly custom validation, I personally reach for the withValidator, and validatorAfter methods. You have full access to the data, and can validate it any way you want, with whatever messages and keys you want too. You can use it like this:

    public function withValidator(Validator $validator)
    {
        $validator->after(function (Validator $validator) {
            $authors = $this->input('authors');

            foreach ($this->input('books') as $idx => $book) {
                if ($book['id'] !== 10) {
                    continue;
                }

                $authorId = $book['author_id'];
                if ($authors[$authorId]['books'][$idx]['id'] !== 20) {
                    continue;
                }

                foreach ($book['pages'] as $num => $page) {
                    if (!isset($page['color']) || empty($page['color'])) {
                        $validator->errors()->add("books.$idx.pages.$num.color", "Whatever error message you want here");
                    }
                }
            }
        });
    }

I made some assumptions about what your rules were doing, if I misinterpreted let me know and I will update. Hope that helps.