Laravel 5.5 new feature - Custom Validation Rules with example

In this tutorial, I will tell you the new features for adding custom validation rules in Laravel 5.5.

In Laravel 5.5, You can define a dedicated class to handle the validation.

In the previous Laravel version, There is still possibility to define custom validation using Validator::extend method but custom validation rule object is an excellent alternative solution.

You can generate a class for implementing custom validation rules in Laravel 5.5 by running new artisan command :

php artisan make:rule CustomValidationRule

After running above command, You will get a file CustomValidationRule.php in following path app/Rules/.

Class CustomValidationRule will have two methods passes and message

The passes method will have two method $attribute and $value that can be used to validate the field and message method return the respected error message when validation fails.

Let's have a example for age validation :

<?php

namespace App\Rules;

use Illuminate\Contracts\Validation\Rule;

class AgeValidationRule implements Rule
{
    public function passes($attribute, $value)
    {
        return $value > 18;
    }

    public function message()
    {
        return ':attribute should be greater than 18!';
    }
}

Now in the controller, you can define the custom validation rules with request in following way :

public function store()
{
    // Validation message would be "age should be greater than 18!"
    $this->validate(request(), [
        'age' => [new AgeValidationRule]
    ]);
}

You can also use the constructor to inject any further dependency if you want.

If you use custom validation rule then you can not pass a string with rules seperated by a comma. You will have to pass each rule as a single element in an array like this :

public function store()
{
    // Validation message would be "age should be greater than 18!"
    $this->validate(request(), [
        'age' => ['required',new AgeValidationRule]
    ]);
}

Click here to see the custom validation rules in previous Laravel version :