Form request classes in Laravel - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Form Request Classes in Laravel

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Laravel application where users can submit their contact information through a form. To keep your controller clean and validate the data properly, you will use Laravel's Form Request classes.

🎯 Goal: Create a Form Request class to validate user input for a contact form. The form should require a name (string, required), email (valid email, required), and message (string, required, minimum 10 characters).

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Form Request class named ContactFormRequest

Add validation rules for name, email, and message

Authorize all users to make the request

Use the Form Request class in a controller method

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Form Request classes help keep your Laravel controllers clean and your validation logic organized. This is common in real Laravel applications handling user input.

💼 Career

Understanding Form Request classes is essential for Laravel developers to write maintainable and secure web applications.

1

Create the Form Request class

Create a Form Request class named ContactFormRequest by running the artisan command php artisan make:request ContactFormRequest. Then, open the generated file and set the authorize method to return true.

Laravel

// Run the artisan command to create ContactFormRequest
// Then open app/Http/Requests/ContactFormRequest.php and set authorize() to return true

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the artisan command to generate the class. Then edit the authorize method to allow all users.

2

Add validation rules

In the ContactFormRequest class, add validation rules inside the rules method for name as required string, email as required and valid email, and message as required string with minimum 10 characters.

Laravel

<?php

namespace App\Http\Requests;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest;

class ContactFormRequest extends FormRequest
{
    public function authorize()
    {
        return true;
    }

    public function rules()
    {
        // Add validation rules here
        return [];
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use Laravel validation rule strings inside the rules method's returned array.

3

Use the Form Request in a controller

In a controller named ContactController, create a method submit that accepts a parameter of type ContactFormRequest. Inside the method, assign the validated data to a variable called $validated by calling $request->validated().

Laravel

validated();
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Type hint the ContactFormRequest in the controller method and call validated() on the request.

4

Complete the controller method

In the submit method of ContactController, add a return statement that returns a JSON response with the validated data under the key data using response()->json().

Laravel

validated();
        // Return JSON response with validated data
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use Laravel's response()->json() helper to return the validated data as JSON.