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RimoteValidationBundle

Extends and simplifies Symfony's Validator by providing a flat array with error messages.

Installation

Install using composer:

composer require rimote/rimote-validation-bundle

Edit /app/AppKernel.php and add the following bundle in the AppKernel::registerBundles() method inside the $bundles array:

new Rimote\ValidationBundle\RimoteValidationBundle()

How does it work?

Whenever you want to validate a Doctrine Entity in your Symfony codebase, instead of using Symfony's Validator component directly, you can use the RimoteValidationBundle's Validator instead.

The RimoteValidationBundle works nearly the same as Symfony's native Validator. Meaning you write your constraints straight into your Entity at the property level and then use the validator's validate() method to check if all property values are in the right format.

The difference is the format of the exception that will be thrown in case of validation errors. This will contain a getErrors() public method you can use to retrieve a flat key/value array of error messages. The keys will correspond with the Entity properties they relate to, the values will be the error messages as defined in your Entity.

Usage

First fetch an instance of the Rimote validator via the service container. Inside a container aware Controller, this can be accomplished like this:

$validator = $this->get('rimote.validator');

Now you can simply pass an instance of an Entity that needs to be validated to the validator's validate() method:

$validator->validate($cat);

If all is good this returns true. Otherwise an exception will be thrown, of the type Rimote\ValidationBundle\Validator\Exception\ErrorMessagesException. This exception has a public method called getErrors(), which produces a flat array with error messages, like so:

array(2) {
    'property_1' =>
    string(30) "This value should not be null."
    'property_2' =>
    string(30) "This value should not be null."
}

In the context of a REST API, this array of error messages can be returned as a JSON response with HTTP code 500. For a detailed example of such an implementation, see below.

Example

In this example we have an Doctrine Entity called Cat, which has three properties that shouldn't be blank: name, fur_type and gender:

Here's how we can validate this inside our CatsController::createAction (which uses the FOSRestBundle to set the POST body to an instance of Cat):

So what problem is actually solved?

Just consider the standard output from Symfony's Validator validate() method, using our above example, to make the practical use of the RimoteValidationBundle clear:

object(Symfony\Component\Validator\ConstraintViolationList)[545]
  private 'violations' => 
    array (size=2)
      0 => 
        object(Symfony\Component\Validator\ConstraintViolation)[546]
          private 'message' => string 'This value should not be null.' (length=30)
          private 'messageTemplate' => string 'This value should not be null.' (length=30)
          private 'parameters' => 
            array (size=1)
              ...
          private 'plural' => null
          private 'root' => 
            object(AppBundle\Entity\Cat)[451]
              ...
          private 'propertyPath' => string 'fur_type' (length=8)
          private 'invalidValue' => null
          private 'constraint' => 
            object(Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\NotNull)[455]
              ...
          private 'code' => string 'ad32d13f-c3d4-423b-909a-857b961eb720' (length=36)
          private 'cause' => null
      1 => 
        object(Symfony\Component\Validator\ConstraintViolation)[548]
          private 'message' => string 'This value should not be null.' (length=30)
          private 'messageTemplate' => string 'This value should not be null.' (length=30)
          private 'parameters' => 
            array (size=1)
              ...
          private 'plural' => null
          private 'root' => 
            object(AppBundle\Entity\Cat)[451]
              ...
          private 'propertyPath' => string 'gender' (length=6)
          private 'invalidValue' => null
          private 'constraint' => 
            object(Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\NotNull)[469]
              ...
          private 'code' => string 'ad32d13f-c3d4-423b-909a-857b961eb720' (length=36)
          private 'cause' => null

This instance of ConstraintViolationList can be preferable to a flat array of error messages. However, if such an array is required, it's necessary to iterate over the ConstraintViolationList, and use several getters such as getPropertyPath() and getMessage() to retrieve the information needed.

Naturally if you need to do this more than once you'd want a generic service to do this for you. In that case save yourself the hassle and use RimoteValidationBundle ;-).