Confused about Laravel "sometimes" validation works

Question

I'm really confused about why this is happening? I had successfully added a record then when I tried to update the record It says that the field is required even I passing it already. Then when I tried to add "sometimes" on the validation. Now, it works. Why? Please enlighten me. Thank you!

my Test Model

This was the result when I tried to remove "sometimes"

Answer 1

sometimes is when you sometimes include the field.

Let's see an example of validation when creating a user:-

$validation = [
 "name" => "required|string|",
 "email" => "required|email",
 "hobbies" => "sometimes|array"
];

Sample payloads

{
 name: "Bob",
 email: "bob@gmail.com"
}
// this will pass

{
 name: "Bob",
 email: "bob@gmail.com",
 hobbies: ["fishing", "swimming"]
}
// this would also pass

{
 name: "Bob",
 email: "bob@gmail.com",
 hobbies: "swimming"
}
// this would fail since it doesn't match "array" validation