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Creating a Basic ToDo Application in Laravel 5 – Part 4

Posted (Updated ) in PHP

Welcome back to my simple to-do application tutorial for Laravel 5. This tutorial is relatively long so I’ve broken it up into multiple posts.

  1. Part 1 – Installation, Database and Routes
  2. Part 2 – Listing Projects and Tasks
  3. Part 3 – Create/Edit/Delete
  4. Part 4 – Validation

The source for each part can also be found on GitHub.

So far we’ve learned how to install and set up Laravel, set up some project and task nested resources and display them to the user. Create, edit and delete functionality has also been implemented. In this chapter we’ll finish things off by adding form validation.

 

Server Side Form Validation

Further Details: See Form Requests and Controller Validation

As it stands our create and edit forms work but they’re not validated. Let’s fix that.

There are multiple ways of handling form validation – some objectively better than others, however for such a small project as this I like to use the controllers validate() method with a Illuminate\Http\Request object like so:

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// /app/Http/Controllers/ProjectsController.php
 
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
 
class ProjectsController extends Controller {
 
	protected $rules = [		'name' => ['required', 'min:3'],		'slug' => ['required'],	]; 
	/**
	 * Store a newly created resource in storage.
	 *
	 * @param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request	 * @return Response
	 */
	public function store(Request $request)
	{
		$this->validate($request, $this->rules); 
		$input = Input::all();
		Project::create( $input );
 
		return Redirect::route('projects.index')->with('message', 'Project created');
	}
 
	/**
	 * Update the specified resource in storage.
	 *
	 * @param  \App\Project $project
	 * @param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request	 * @return Response
	 */
	public function update(Project $project, Request $request)
	{
		$this->validate($request, $this->rules); 
		$input = array_except(Input::all(), '_method');
		$project->update($input);
 
		return Redirect::route('projects.show', $project->slug)->with('message', 'Project updated.');
	}
 
 
// /app/Http/Controllers/TasksController.php
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
 
class TasksController extends Controller {
 
	protected $rules = [		'name' => ['required', 'min:3'],		'slug' => ['required'],		'description' => ['required'],	]; 
	/**
	 * Store a newly created resource in storage.
	 *
	 * @param  \App\Project $project
	 * @param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request	 * @return Response
	 */
	public function store(Project $project, Request $request)
	{
		$this->validate($request, $this->rules); 
		$input = Input::all();
		$input['project_id'] = $project->id;
		Task::create( $input );
 
		return Redirect::route('projects.show', $project->slug)->with('Task created.');
	}
 
	/**
	 * Update the specified resource in storage.
	 *
	 * @param  \App\Project $project
	 * @param  \App\Task    $task
	 * @param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request	 * @return Response
	 */
	public function update(Project $project, Task $task, Request $request)
	{
		$this->validate($request, $this->rules); 
		$input = array_except(Input::all(), '_method');
		$task->update($input);
 
		return Redirect::route('projects.tasks.show', [$project->slug, $task->slug])->with('message', 'Task updated.');
	}

We need a place to display any generated errors. Open /resources/views/app.blade.php and drop the following above @yield(‘content’):

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<div class="content">
	@if (Session::has('message'))
		<div class="flash alert-info">
			<p>{{ Session::get('message') }}</p>
		</div>
	@endif
	@if ($errors->any())		<div class='flash alert-danger'>			@foreach ( $errors->all() as $error )				<p>{{ $error }}</p>			@endforeach		</div>	@endif 
	@yield('content')
</div>

See Available Validation Rules for a complete list of rules available. Validation should now be working. If validation on a form fails, $this->validate() will redirect back to the current page along with an ErrorBag of errors which will then be displayed on the page.

 

Conclusion

Over the court of this tutorial we’ve learned how to install and configure Laravel 5, add extra packages, handle seeds and migrations, generate and display resources, add create/edit/display pages for those resources and finally today we set up form validation. Along the way we even picked up a few more advanced concepts such as route model binding and CSRF protection. Despite its seemingly simple appearance at first a to-do application generally makes for a great starter app for any new PHP framework and Laravel has made the process of creating ours painless and fun. Happy coding!