README

Violin is an easy to use, highly customisable PHP validator.

Note: This package is under heavy development and is not recommended for production.

Installing

Install using Composer.

{
    "require": {
        "ndaedzo/violin": "1.*"
    }
}

Basic usage

use Violin\Violin;

$v = new Violin;

$v->validate([
    'name' => 'billy',
    'age' => 20
], [
    'name' => 'required',
    'age' => 'required|int'
]);

if($v->valid()) {
    echo 'Valid!';
} else {
    echo '<pre>', var_dump($v->errors()), '</pre>';
}

Adding custom rules

Adding custom rules is simple. If the closure returns false, the rule fails.

$v->addRuleMessage('isBanana', '%s expects banana, found "%s" instead.');

$v->addRule('isBanana', function($field, $value) {
    return $value === 'banana';
});

Adding custom error messages

You can add rule messages, or field messages for total flexibility.

Adding a rule message

$v->addRuleMessage('required', 'You better fill in the %s field, or else.');

Adding rule messages in bulk

$v->addRuleMessages([
    'required' => 'You better fill in the %s field, or else.',
    'int' => 'The %s needs to be an integer, but I found %s.',
]);

Adding a field message

Any field messages you add are preferred over any default or custom rule messages.

$v->addFieldMessage('username', 'required', 'You need to enter a username to sign up.');

Adding field messages in bulk

$v->addFieldMessages([
    'username' => [
        'required' => 'You need to enter a username to sign up.'
    ],
    'age' => [
        'required' => 'I need your age.',
        'int' => 'Your age needs to be an integer.',
    ]
]);

Error output

Errors are output categorised by field, so you're free to play around with them in whatever way you need them output.

array(2) {
  ["name"]=>
  array(1) {
    [0]=>
    string(16) "name is required"
  }
  ["age"]=>
  array(2) {
    [0]=>
    string(15) "age is required"
    [1]=>
    string(20) "age must be a number"
  }
}

Extending the Violin class

You can extend Violin to implement your own validation class and add rules, custom rule messages and custom field messages.

class Validator extends Violin\Violin
{
    protected $db;

    protected function __construct(Database $db)
    {
        $this->db = $db; // Some database dependency

        // You can add a custom rule message here if you like, or, you
        // could add it outside of this validation class when you
        // make use of your new Validator object.
        $this->addRuleMessage('usernameDoesNotExist', 'That username is taken');
    }

    // Prepend your validation rule name with validate_
    public function validate_usernameDoesNotExist($field, $value)
    {
        if($db->where('username', '=', $value)->count()) {
            return false;
        }
    }
}

$v = new Validator;

// ... and so on.

Rules

This list of rules are in progress. Of course, you can always contribute to the project if you'd like to add more to the base ruleset.

activeUrl

If the URL provided is an active URL using checkdnsrr().

alnum

If the value is alphanumeric.

alnumDash

If the value is alphanumeric. Dashes and underscores are permitted.

alpha

If the value is alphabetic letters only.

alphaDash

If the value is alphabetic letters only. Dashes and underscores are permitted.

bool

If the value is a boolean.

email

If the value is a valid email.

int

If the value is an integer, including integers within strings. 1 and '1' are both classed as integers.

required

If the value is present.

Contributing

Please file issues under GitHub, or submit a pull request if you'd like to directly contribute.

Todo

• Allow parameter based rules. For example:

$v->validate([
    'name' => 'billy',
    'age' => '20'
], [
    'name' => 'required',
    'age' => 'required|int|max:21'
]);

• Improve error storage so errors[] doesn't contain a list of strings, but a list of messages to look up. Rough example:

protected $errors = [
    'name' => [ // field
        'args' => [
            'FIELD_NAME', 'FIELD_VALUE'
        ],
        'errors' => [
            'required', 'alpha' // errors that have occured
        ]
    ]
];

Then when calling errors(), this should collect up errors for that field, build the string and return them.

• Allow errors to be defined with {field} and {value} rather than %s's for greater flexibility.