Return validator messages in custom Rule

Question

A problem that we probably didn't know about when switching to PHP 8+: Very often, in the rules we created earlier, we returned a message like this:

public function message(): array
{
    return [$this->validator->errors()->messages()];
} 

When using PHP 7.4 - this isn't a problem, but not for PHP 8+

Since looking "deeper" into how the laravel framework forms messages, we get an error in the replaceAttributePlaceholder method of the FormatsMessages class:

/**
 * Replace the : attribute placeholder in the given message.
 *
 * @param  string  $message
 * @param  string  $value
 * @return string
 */
protected function replaceAttributePlaceholder($message, $value)
{
    return str_replace(
        [':attribute', ':ATTRIBUTE', ':Attribute'],
        [$value, Str::upper($value), Str::ucfirst($value)],
        $message
    );
}

And indeed, if we open any editor and run the same code, but for two different versions, we'll get:

If you return the message like this:

public function message(): array
{
    return $this->validator->errors()->messages();
}

We will avoid the error, but accordingly, the format of the message will be different - this doesn't suit me, and the format of the message should remain the same. Does anyone have any ideas on how to save the format and fix the error?

Answer 1

To solve this problem I had to follow these steps:

1. Use your validator instead of the framework 'validator':

$this->app->make('validator')->resolver(function ($translator, $data, $rules, $messages) {
    return new App\Validation\Validator($translator, $data, $rules, $messages);
});

2. Override replaceAttributePlaceholder function:

<?php

namespace App\Validation;

use Illuminate\Validation\Concerns\FormatsMessages;
use Illuminate\Validation\Validator as ValidationValidator;

class Validator extends ValidationValidator
{
    use FormatsMessages {
        replaceAttributePlaceholder as protected traitReplaceAttributePlaceholder;
    }

    /**
     * Replace the :attribute placeholder in the given message.
     *
     * @param  string  $message
     * @param  string  $value
     * @return string
     */
    protected function replaceAttributePlaceholder($message, $value)
    {
        if (is_string($message)) {
            return $this->traitReplaceAttributePlaceholder($message, $value);
        }

        $messages = $message;
        foreach ($messages as $key => $message) {
            if (is_array($message)) {
                $this->replaceAttributePlaceholder($message, $key);
            }

            $messages[$key] = $this->replaceAttributePlaceholder($message, $key);
        }

        return $messages;
    }
}