Respect Validation

Respect\Validation is the most awesome validation engine ever created for PHP. Featuring:

• Fluent/Chained builders
• Composite validation (nested, grouped and related rules)
• Informative, awesome exceptions
• More than 30 fully tested validators
• PHP 5.3 only
• Possible integration with Zend 2.0 and Symfony 2.0 validators

Quick Reference

Namespace import

<?php
use Respect\Validation\Validator as v;

Simple validation

$number = 123;
v::numeric()->validate($number); //true

Chained validation

//From 1 to 15 non-whitespace alphanumeric characters 
$validUsername = v::alnum()
                  ->noWhitespace()
                  ->length(1,15);

$validUsername->validate('alganet'); //true

Validating object attributes

$validUser = v::attribute('username', $validUsername)    //reusing!
              ->attribute('birthdate', v::date('Y-m-d'));

$user = new \stdClass;
$user->username = 'alganet';
$user->birthdate = '1987-07-01';

$validUser->validate($user); //true

Validator reuse (works on nested, big validators too!)

$validUsername->validate('respect');            //true
$validUsername->validate('alexandre gaigalas'); //false 
$validUsername->validate('#$%');                //false 

Cool, informative exceptions

The following code:

try {
    $validUsername->assert('really messed up screen#name');
} catch(\InvalidArgumentException $e) {
   echo $e->getFullMessage();
}

Produces this message:

\-None of 3 required rules passed
  |-"really messed up screen#name" does not contain only letters, digits and "_"
  |-"really messed up screen#name" contains whitespace
  \-"really messed up screen#name" length is not between 1 and 15

Message finding on nested Exceptions

Consider the following scenario:

$validBlogPost = v::object()
                  ->attribute('title',  v::string()->length(1,32))
                  ->attribute('author', $validUser)                 //reuse!
                  ->attribute('date',   v::date())
                  ->attribute('text',   v::string());

$blogPost = new \stdClass;
$blogPost->author = clone $validUser;
$blogPost->author->username = '# invalid #';

The following code:

try {
    $validBlogPost->assert($blogPost);
} catch (\InvalidArgumentException $e) {
    echo $e->findRelated('author', 'username', 'noWhitespace')->getMainMessage();
}

Finds the specific noWhitespace message inside author->username and prints it:

"# invalid #" contains whitespace

Using Zend and/or Symfony validators

$validHostName = v::zend('hostname')->assert('google.com');
$validTime     = v::sf('time')->assert('22:00:01');

Cool, isn't it?

Roadmap

• Custom validators (create your own validation rules and exceptions)
• Validation message improvements (translation, contextualization)