Merging

The following classes support merging via the merge() method:

• ValidatableCollection
• Validatable classes

The merge() method

The signature of the merge method looks as follows:

use LaraPkgs\Validation\Contracts\ProvidesValidatableCollection;
use LaraPkgs\Validation\ValidatableCollection;

public function merge(ValidatableCollection|ProvidesValidatableCollection ...$mergeables): self

Validatable classes implement the ProvidesValidatableCollection contract out of the box, meaning both raw collections and domain objects can be passed directly to merge().

Immutability

Calling the merge() method always returns a new instance of the class it is called on.

Example

The UserValidation class:

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace App\Validation;

final class UserValidation extends BaseValidatable
{
    protected function makeValidatableCollection(): ValidatableCollection
    {
        return Validatable::collection(
            Validatable::item('name')->required()->string(),
            Validatable::item('email')->required()->email(),
        );
    }
}

The AddressValidation class:

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace App\Validation;

final class AddressValidation extends BaseValidatable
{
    protected function makeValidatableCollection(): ValidatableCollection
    {
        return Validatable::collection(
            Validatable::item('street')->required()->string(),
            Validatable::item('city')->required()->string(),
        );
    }
}

The client code:

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

use App\Validation\UserValidation;
use App\Validation\AddressValidation;

$userValidation = new UserValidation();
$addressValidation = new AddressValidation();

$merged = $userValidation->merge($addressValidation);

$data = [
    'name' => 'John Doe',
    'email' => 'j.doe@unknown.com',
    'street' => 'some street',
    'city' => 'somewhere'
];

$validated = $merged->validate($data);

// [
//     'name' => 'John Doe',
//     'email' => 'j.doe@unknown.com',
//     'street' => 'some street',
//     'city' => 'somewhere'
// ]

Prefixing

Merging is extra powerful when used together with prefixing. More information about prefixing can be found here.