Laravel 5 __construct() argument passing error

Question

So I am trying to group all my validation rules into its respective files in folders for easy maintenance. Below is how my folder structures look:

Project
--app
--config
--(more folders)
--domains
----App
--------Entities
--------Repositories
--------Services
--------Validators
----Core
--------Validators

So what I wanted to achieve is under Core\Validators I created a LaravelValidator.php which look like this

<?php namespace Core\Validators;

use Validator;

abstract class LaravelValidator {

        /**
         * Validator
         *
         * @var \Illuminate\Validation\Factory
         */
        protected $validator;

        /**
         * Validation data key => value array
         *
         * @var Array
         */
        protected $data = array();

        /**
         * Validation errors
         *
         * @var Array
         */
        protected $errors = array();

        /**
         * Validation rules
         *
         * @var Array
         */
        protected $rules = array();

        /**
         * Custom validation messages
         *
         * @var Array
         */
        protected $messages = array();

        public function __construct(Validator $validator)
        {
                $this->validator = $validator;
        }

        /**
         * Set data to validate
         *
         * @return \Services\Validations\AbstractLaravelValidator
         */
        public function with(array $data)
        {
                $this->data = $data;

                return $this;
        }

        /**
         * Validation passes or fails
         *
         * @return Boolean
         */
        public function passes()
        {
                $validator = Validator::make(
                        $this->data,
                        $this->rules,
                        $this->messages
                );

                if ($validator->fails())
                {
                        $this->errors = $validator->messages();

                        return false;
                }

                return true;
        }

        /**
         * Return errors, if any
         *
         * @return array
         */
        public function errors()
        {
                return $this->errors;
        }

}

Then in my App\Validators I created a file name RegistrationFormValidator.php which look like this

<?php namespace App\Validators\Profile;

class RegistrationFormValidator extends \Core\Validators\LaravelValidator 
{
    protected $rules = array(
        'first_name'    =>  'required',
        'last_name'     =>  'required',
        'username'      =>  'required',
        'password'      =>  'required',
        'rTPassword'    =>  'required',
        'profile_url'   =>  'required',
        'email'         =>  'required|email',
        'gender'        =>  'required',
        'dob'           =>  'required',
    ); 
}

so usually in laravel 4.2, to validate something all i do is construct the validation rules and then call it in services which look like this

<?php namespace App\Services\Profile;

    /*
    |-----------------------------------------------------------
    |   This section injects the repositories being used  
    |   in this service.
    |-----------------------------------------------------------
    */

    use App\Repositories\Profile\ProfileRepository;
    use Core\ValidationFailedException;
    use App\Validators\Profile\RegistrationFormValidator;
    use Validator;

class ProfileService implements ProfileServiceInterface
{
    protected $_profile;
    protected $v;

    /*
    |-----------------------------------------------------------
    |   All construsted models variables must carry 
    |   the '_' sign to identify it as a model variable
    |-----------------------------------------------------------
    */

    public function __construct(ProfileRepository $_profile, RegistrationFormValidator $v)
    {
        $this->_profile = $_profile;
        $this->v = $v;
    }

    /*
    |-----------------------------------------------------------
    |   1.  All try and catch error handling must be done
    |       in the respective controllers.
    |
    |   2.  All data formattings must be done in this section
    |       then pass to repository for storing.
    |
    |   3.  No controller actions allown in this section
    |-----------------------------------------------------------
    */

    public function createProfile($array)
    {

        if($this->v->passes())
        {
           //save into db
        } 
        else 
        {
            throw new ValidationFailedException(
                    'Validation Fail',
                    null,
                    $this->v->errors()
                    );
        }
    }
}

But the problem is once i upgraded into laravel 5 i did the same thing and when i try to execute the code it returns me with this error

ErrorException in ProfileService.php line 26:
Argument 2 passed to App\Services\Profile\ProfileService::__construct() must be an instance of App\Validators\Profile\RegistrationFormValidator, none given

My code works absolutely fine in L4.2 but once i upgraded it wont work anymore. I also know that i can do validation like such

public function createProfile($array)
{
    $v = Validator::make($array, [
        'first_name'    =>  'required',
        'last_name'     =>  'required',
        'username'      =>  'required',
        'password'      =>  'required',
        'rTPassword'    =>  'required',
        'profile_url'   =>  'required',
        'email'         =>  'required|email',
        'gender'        =>  'required',
        'dob'           =>  'required',
    ]); 

    if($v->passes())
    {

    } 
    else 
    {
        throw new ValidationFailedException(
                'Validation Fail',
                null,
                $v->errors()
        );
    }
}

But the problem is if i would have more validation rules or scenario it will flood the whole service file.

Any suggestions or solutions that will guide me? thanks in advance!

Answer 1

In Laravel 5 you have something similar, which handles better the validation and makes validation clean and easy. It is called Form Request Validation. The idea there is the same - to have different classes that handle validation in different scenarios.

So whenever you need a validation you can create new FormRequest, like this:

php artisan make:request RegisterFormRequest

A new class will be generated under app/Http/Requests. There you can see it has two methods authorize and rules. In the first one you can make a check if given user is allwed to make this request. In the second method you can define your rules, just like in the validator.

public functions rules() {
    return array(
        'first_name'    =>  'required',
        'last_name'     =>  'required',
        'username'      =>  'required',
        'password'      =>  'required',
        'rTPassword'    =>  'required',
        'profile_url'   =>  'required',
        'email'         =>  'required|email',
        'gender'        =>  'required',
        'dob'           =>  'required',
    );
}

Then you can change your controller method like this:

public function postCreateProfile(RegisterFormRequest $request) {
    // your code here
}

The are a few cool things here. First one - the class will be automatically constructed in injected in your controller method by the IoC container, you don't need to do something special. The second cool thing is that the validation check is done before the Request object is passed to the controller, so if any validation error occurs you will be redirected back with all errors according to your rules set. This means that writing your code in the postCreateProfile method you can assume if this code get executed the validation is passed at this position and no additional check are needed by you.

I suggest you to migrate your code to use Laravel 5 Form Requests, because what you need is already implemented in the framework, and yes basically this is the point of the migration of one version to another. You can also check the documentation for more examples.