Simple Validator Documentation

Validation is the process that checks for correctness, meaningfulness and security of the input data. SimpleValidator is a library that handles validation process easily.

Install

Including to your current composer.json

Add this line into require in your composer.json:

"simple-validator/simple-validator": "1.0.*"

and call

php composer.phar update

Installing directly

Download composer.phar and call

php composer.phar install

and use autoload.php to include the classes

require 'vendor/autoload.php'

A few examples:

<?php
$rules = [
    'name' => [
        'required',
        'alpha',
        'max_length(50)'
    ],
    'age' => [
        'required',
        'integer',
    ],
    'email' => [
        'required',
        'email'
    ],
    'password' => [
        'required',
        'equals(:password_verify)'
    ],
    'password_verify' => [
        'required'
    ]
];
$validation_result = SimpleValidator\Validator::validate($_POST, $rules);
if ($validation_result->isSuccess() == true) {
    echo "validation ok";
} else {
    echo "validation not ok";
    var_dump($validation_result->getErrors());
}

Custom Rules with anonymous functions

Anonymous functions make the custom validations easier to be implemented.

Example

$rules = [
    'id' => [
        'required',
        'integer',
        'post_exists' => function($input) {
            $query = mysqli_query("SELECT * FROM post WHERE id = " . $input);
            if (mysqli_num_rows($query) == 0)
                return false;
            return true;
        },
        'between(5,15)' => function($input, $param1, $param2) {
            if (($input > $param1) && ($input < $param2))
                return true;
            return false;
        }
    ]
];

and you need to add an error text for your rule to the error file (default: errors/en.php).

'post_exists' => "Post does not exist"

or add a custom error text for that rule

$validation_result->customErrors([
    'post_exists' => 'Post does not exist'
]);

Another example to understand scoping issue

// my local variable
$var_to_compare = "1234";
$rules = [
    'password' => [
        'required',
        'integer',
        // pass my local variable to anonymous function
        'is_match' => function($input) use (&$var_to_compare) {
            if ($var_to_compare == $input)
                return true;
            return false;
        }
    ]
];

Custom Validators

You can assume SimpleValidator as a tool or an interface to create a validator for yourself.

Custom validators can have their own rules, own error files or default language definitions. In addition, you can override default rules in your custom validator.

class MyValidator extends \SimpleValidator\Validator {

    // methods have to be static !!!
    protected static function is_awesome($input) {
        if ($input == "awesome")
            return true;
        return false;
    }

    // overriding a default rule (url)
    protected static function url($input) {
        return preg_match('|^http(s)?://[a-z0-9-]+(.[a-z0-9-]+)*(:[0-9]+)?(/.*)?$|i', $input);
    }

    // set default language for your validator
    // if you don't override this method, the default language is "en"
    protected function getDefaultLang() {
        return getMyApplicationsDefaultLanguage();
    }

    // defining error files for your validator
    // in this example your files should live in "{class_path}/errors/{language}/validator.php
    protected function getErrorFilePath($lang) {
        return __DIR__ . "/errors/" . $lang . "/validator.php";
    }

}

Create an error file:

return [
    'is_awesome' => 'the :attribute is not awesome'
    // error text for url is already defined in default error text file you don't have to define it here, but optionally you can
];

And then, call the validate method.

$rules = [
    'website' => [
        'is_awesome',
        'url'
    ]
];
$validation_result = MyValidator::validate($_POST, $rules);

Custom Rule parameters

A rule can have multiple parameters. An example:

$rule = [
    'id' => [
        'rule1(:input1,:input2,2,5,:input3)' => function($input, $input1, $input2, $value1, $value2, $input3) {
            // validation here
        }
    ],
    // and so on..
];

Custom Error messages

Using Error file

Custom rules provides localization for the error messages. Create a new file under errors folder, example: errors/es.php and call getErrors() method using:

$validation_result->getErrors('es');

Using customErrors method

You can add custom errors using customErrors method.

Examples:

$validation_result->customErrors([
    // input_name.rule => error text
    'website.required' => 'We need to know your web site',
    // rule => error text
    'required' => ':attribute field is required',
    'name.alpha' => 'Name field must contain alphabetical characters',
    'email_addr.email' => 'Email should be valid',
    'email_addr.min_length' => 'Hey! Email is shorter than :params(0)',
    'min_length' => ':attribute must be longer than :params(0)'
]);

Naming Inputs

$naming => [
    'name' => 'Name',
    'url' => 'Web Site',
    'password' => 'Password',
    'password_verify' => 'Password Verification'
];
$validation_result = SimpleValidator\Validator::validate($_POST, $rules, $naming);

Output sample:

• Name field is required -instead of "name field is required"-
• Web Site field is required -instead of "url field is required"-
• Password field should be same as Password Verification -equals(:password_verify) rule-

More

You can explicitly check out the validations using has method that might be useful for Unit Testing purposes.

// All return boolean
$validation_result->has('email');
$validation_result->has('email','required');
$validation_result->has('password','equals');

Default validations

Rule	Parameter	Description	Example
required	No	Returns FALSE if the input is empty
numeric	No	Returns FALSE if the input is not numeric
email	No	Returns FALSE if the input is not a valid email address
integer	No	Returns FALSE if the input is not an integer value
float	No	Returns FALSE if the input is not a float value
alpha	No	Returns FALSE if the input contains non-alphabetical characters
alpha_numeric	No	Returns FALSE if the input contains non-alphabetical and numeric characters
ip	No	Returns FALSE if the input is not a valid IP (IPv6 supported)
url	No	Returns FALSE if the input is not a valid URL
max_length	Yes	Returns FALSE if the input is longer than the parameter	max_length(10)
min_length	Yes	Returns FALSE if the input is shorter than the parameter	min_length(10)
exact_length	Yes	Returns FALSE if the input is not exactly parameter value long	exact_length(10)
equals	Yes	Returns FALSE if the input is not same as the parameter	equals(:password_verify) or equals(foo)