Guardian

Self validating models for smarter & cleaner Laravel 4 Eloquent ORM. Inspired by Ardent.

Installation

Add our repository to your composer.json file like so:

"repositories": [{
        "type": "vcs",
        "url": "https://github.com/olsgreen/Guardian"
    }],

also require Guardian:

"require": {
	"olsgreen/guardian": "dev-master"
},

then run composer update.

Getting started

Guardian extends the Eloquent model making it extremely easy to retrofit models or remove later if needed.

To get up and running all you need to do is change your model to extend from Guardian and add a getValidator() method so that Guardian can obtain a correctly configured instance of a Validator.

use Olsgreen\Guardian\Guardian;

class User extends Guardian {

	........

	/**
	 * Overridden from the base class
	 * 
	 * @return Illuminate\Validation\Validator
	 */
	public function getValidator()
	{
		// Standard rules
		$rules = array(
			'first_name' => 'required|min:3',
			'last_name' => 'required|min:3',
			'username' => 'required|unique:users,username|min:2',
			'password' => 'required|min:6',
			'email' => 'email|unique:users,email',
			);

		// Rules for models that already exist
		if ($this->exists) {
			$rules['username'] = 'required|unique:users,username,' . $this->id . '|min:2';
			$rules['email'] = 'email|unique:users,email,' . $this->id;
		}

		// Return the validator
		return Validator::make($this->attributes, $rules);
	}

	........

}

Validation Errors

Guardian will automatically validate the model on calling save(). If validation fails save() will return false otherwise it will return true, providing the underlying save was successful.

If the validation fails your can get the MessageBag containing the validation errors by calling getValidationMessages() on the model.

An example of saving a user within a controller:

if (!$user->save()) {
	return Redirect::route('user.form')->withErrors($user->getValidationMessages());
}

Force Save

You can force a save, completely bypassing validation, by calling forceSave() on a model.

Sidestep MassAssignmentExceptions with fillFillable()

fillFillable() allows you to quickly and easily fill a model with an array of attributes. This method conveintly sidesteps the MassAssignmentException generated when trying to use the fill() method with Input::all(). A usage example is below:

$user = User::find(1);
$user->fillFillable(Input::all());
$user->save();

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Oliver Green

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.