Form Request(s)

Introduction#

Custom requests (or Form Requests) are useful in situations when one wants to authorize & validate a request before hitting the controller method.

One may think of two practical uses, creating & updating a record while each action has a different set of validation (or authorization) rules.

Using Form Requests is trivial, one has to type-hint the request class in method.

Syntax#

php artisan make:request name_of_request

Remarks#

Requests are useful when separating your validation from Controller. It also allows you to check if the request is authorized.

Creating Requests

php artisan make:request StoreUserRequest

php artisan make:request UpdateUserRequest

Note: You can also consider using names like StoreUser or UpdateUser (without Request appendix) since your FormRequests are placed in folder app/Http/Requests/.

Using Form Request

Lets say continue with User example (you may have controller with store method and update method). To use FormRequests you use type-hinting the specific request.

...

public function store(App\Http\Requests\StoreRequest $request, App\User $user) { 
    //by type-hinting the request class, Laravel "runs" StoreRequest 
    //before actual method store is hit

    //logic that handles storing new user 
    //(both email and password has to be in $fillable property of User model
    $user->create($request->only(['email', 'password']));
    return redirect()->back();
}

...

public function update(App\Http\Requests\UpdateRequest $request, App\User $users, $id) { 
    //by type-hinting the request class, Laravel "runs" UpdateRequest 
    //before actual method update is hit

    //logic that handles updating a user 
    //(both email and password has to be in $fillable property of User model
    $user = $users->findOrFail($id);
    $user->update($request->only(['password']));
    return redirect()->back();
}

Handling Redirects after Validation

Sometimes you may want to have some login to determine where the user gets redirected to after submitting a form. Form Requests give a variety of ways.

By default there are 3 variables declared in the Request $redirect, $redirectRoute and $redirectAction.

On top of those 3 variables you can override the main redirect handler getRedirectUrl().

A sample request is given below explaining what you can do.

<?php namespace App;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest as Request;

class SampleRequest extends Request {

    // Redirect to the given url
    public $redirect;

    // Redirect to a given route
    public $redirectRoute;

    // Redirect to a given action
    public $redirectAction;


    /**
     * Get the URL to redirect to on a validation error.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    protected function getRedirectUrl()
    {

        // If no path is given for `url()` it will return a new instance of `Illuminate\Routing\UrlGenerator`

        // If your form is down the page for example you can redirect to a hash
        return url()->previous() . '#contact';

        //`url()` provides several methods you can chain such as

        // Get the current URL
        return url()->current();

        // Get the full URL of the current request
        return url()->full();

        // Go back
        return url()->previous();

        // Or just redirect back
        return redirect()->back();
    }


    /**
     * Get the validation rules that apply to the request.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function rules()
    {
        return [];
    }

    /**
     * Determine if the user is authorized to make this request.
     *
     * @return bool
     */
    public function authorize()
    {
        return true;
    }
}