How to validate unique fields while updating in make:request in laravel

Question

I'm developing a small application in Laravel 5.5 where I'm creating a request with updateContact and having unique email validation rule, while using the same validation inside the controller I can easily make:

$contact = Contact::find($request->id);
Validator::make($data, [
    'first_name' => 'required|max:255',
    'email' => 'required', Rule::unique('contacts')->ignore($contact->id),
    'address' => 'max:255',
    'city' => 'max:255',
    'state' => 'max:255',
    'country' => 'max:255',
]);

and can validate, by I made out request through php artisan make:request UpdateContact and added the following inside updateContact.php:

namespace App\Http\Requests;

use App\Contact;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest;
use Illuminate\Validation\Rule;

class UpdateContact extends FormRequest
{
    /**
     * Determine if the user is authorized to make this request.
     *
     * @return bool
     */
    public function authorize()
    {
        return true;
    }

    /**
     * Get the validation rules that apply to the request.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function rules()
    {
        $contact = Contact::find($request->id);
        return [
            'first_name' => 'required|max:255',
            'email' => 'required', Rule::unique('contacts')->ignore($contact->id),
            'company_id' => 'required',
            'address' => 'max:255',
            'city' => 'max:255',
            'state' => 'max:255',
            'country' => 'max:255',
        ];
    }

    public function messages()
    {
        return [
            'company_id.required' => 'Company name is required'
        ];
    }
}

But I don't know about the $request->id how can I use this?

Answer 1

Inside a FormRequest class, $this is the variable scope of the request object. Simply do the following to get the ID property

$contact = Contact::find($this->id);

Same goes for any other field in your form.