Laravel 5.3 validation issue

Question

Recently I've upgraded Laravel 5.3 from Laravel 5.2 and after that I am finding several validation issues. One of the strange issue is with rule required_without i.e. working fine with laravel 5.2.

The route is:

Route::post('chats/create','ChatController@insertMessage');

Inside controller, I've defined the method insertMessage() as:

public function insertMessage(Request $request){
    $error = false; 
    $result = array();
    $responsecode = 200;
    $input = $request->all(); 

    $validator = Validator::make(
                    array(
                        "patient_id" => $input["patient_id"],
                        "chat_id" => !empty($input["chat_id"]) ? $input["chat_id"] : null, 
                        "sender_id"=> $input["sender_id"], 
                        "image" => $request->hasFile('file') ? $request->file('file') : null,
                        "content" => !empty($input["content"]) ? $input["content"] : null
                    ),
                    array(
                        "patient_id" => "required|exists:users,id,user_type,patient", 
                        "chat_id" => "sometimes|nullable|exists:chats,id", 
                        "sender_id"=>"required|exists:users,id", 
                        "image" => "required_without:content|image",
                        "content" => "required_without:image"
                    )
                );

    if ($validator->passes()){
        try {
            DB::beginTransaction();
            //Some operations

        }
        catch(\Exception $e){
            //Some operations
        }
    }
    //Finally return the response
    return response()->json(array(
        'error' => $error,
        'input_data' => $result),
        $responsecode
    );
}

And the request I am making using post-man is as:

The request headers are Authorization and a custom header, no content-type header is there. And the response I am getting is:

{
  "error": true,
  "input_data": {
    "error_message": "The image must be an image. "
  }
}

Why it requires an image if content field is present there in the request data?

Using statement dd($input); I can get the post data as:

array:4 [
  "patient_id" => "3"
  "content" => "Hello"
  "sender_id" => "1"
  "sender_name" => "System Admin"
]

Answer 1

You may use the validation rules as,

"image" => "nullable|required_without:content|image",
"content" => "nullable|required_without:image"

Since laravel 5.3 has nullable rule, you may set it where your input value can be a null. Looking into your code, you're setting image and content as null if not present in the request.

"image" => $request->hasFile('file') ? $request->file('file') : null,
"content" => !empty($input["content"]) ? $input["content"] : null

So finally your validator should look like,

$validator = Validator::make(
    array(
        "patient_id" => $input["patient_id"],
        "chat_id" => !empty($input["chat_id"]) ? $input["chat_id"] : null, 
        "sender_id"=> $input["sender_id"], 
        "image" => $request->hasFile('file') ? $request->file('file') : null,
        "content" => !empty($input["content"]) ? $input["content"] : null
    ),
    array(
        "patient_id" => "required|exists:users,id,user_type,patient", 
        "chat_id" => "sometimes|nullable|exists:chats,id", 
        "sender_id"=>"required|exists:users,id", 
        "image" => "nullable|required_without:content|image",
        "content" => "nullable|required_without:image"
    )
);

Hope this helps!!