How to Implement the Laravel Exists Rule on Multiple Columns with OR Logic

Описание: Learn how to create a Laravel validation rule that checks for existence in multiple columns using an OR condition, suitable for email or mobile number validation.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/70448833/ asked by the user 'Pejman' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/836979/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/70458105/ provided by the user 'matticustard' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/5309998/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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How to Implement the Laravel Exists Rule on Multiple Columns with OR Logic

When working with user authentication in Laravel, you might encounter a situation where you need to verify if an identifier (like an email or a mobile number) exists in your database. The challenge here is to implement a rule that can check multiple columns at once, using an OR logic. This means that you want to ensure either the email or the mobile number is present in the users table. In this post, we’ll explore how to achieve that functionality effectively in Laravel.

Problem Overview

Assume you're using Laravel 8.x and you have a user registration or authentication feature. In this feature, you might want to allow users to log in or register using either their email address or mobile number. This leads to the requirement of validating the identifier against two fields in your database:

Email Field (email)

Mobile Field (mobile)

However, the default Laravel validation does not have a built-in way to combine checks on different columns with an OR condition directly within its exists rule.

Solution

To resolve this issue, we can use a workaround by implementing conditional logic in the rules method of your request class. Here’s how you can set it up:

Step 1: Create a Form Request

Firstly, ensure that you have a custom request class where you can define your validation rules. If you haven’t created one yet, you can generate it using the Artisan command:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Step 2: Define Your Validation Rules

In your AuthIdentifyRequest, you will implement custom logic to validate the identifier based on whether it contains an "@ " symbol. This indicates that the user is likely entering an email. Here’s how you can set up your rules:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Explanation of the Code

Str::contains($this->identifier, '@ '): This line checks if the identifier contains an "@ " symbol, which suggests that the value entered is an email.

Ternary Operator: It uses a ternary operator to decide which validation rule to apply:

If the identifier is an email, the rule exists:users,email is used.

Otherwise, if it is not an email, the rule exists:users,mobile is applied.

Step 3: Testing Your Validation

Once you have set up your request class, you can proceed to use it in your controller. Ensure that you test with various inputs to confirm that your logic correctly identifies and validates both email addresses and mobile numbers.

Conclusion

By implementing the workaround of using the Str::contains method along with conditional logic in your validation rules, you can efficiently validate whether a user exists in either the email or mobile number columns. This solution enables you to maintain flexibility in your user authentication processes within Laravel.

Feel free to incorporate this approach into your Laravel projects, and ensure to test different scenarios to cover all edge cases!