How can I validate my request where the data is in a nested structure?

December 16, 2022

My controller receives the following XHR request:

[
  "data" => [
    "key1" => "value1",
    "key2" => "value2",
  ]
]

That’s why the validation always returns a fail. But I only want to validate the data within data. Is there a request validation function where I only pass the data?

>Solution :

As a user mentioned in the comments, you have to iterate each entry by using data.KEY format.

If your data is like:

[
    "data" => [
        "key1" => "value1",
        "key2" => "value2",
    ]
]

You can validate it like this:

public function rules()
{
    return [
        'data' => ['required', 'array'],
        'data.key1' => ['required', 'string', 'in:value1,valueN'],
        'data.key2' => ['required', 'string', 'unique:table,column'],
    ];
}

Those rules are just examples, so please, do read How to validate arrays as the documentation has a defined section about it