Laravel 4 Validation is Broken

Question

A simple date format mm/dd/yyyy validation is all I need...

$rules = array(
    'renewal_date' =>  array('required', 'date_format:?')
    );

What do I set the date format to? The Laravel documentation could be so much better.

Solution 1

Workaround:

'renewal_date' => array('required', 'date_format:m/d/Y', 'regex:/[0-9]{2}\/[0-9]{2}\/[0-9]{4}/')

Solution 2

Documentation is pretty clear to me, you should use

date_format:format

"The field under validation must match the format defined according to the date_parse_from_format PHP function."

Looking at it: http://php.net/manual/en/function.date-parse-from-format.php, I see you can do something like this:

$rules = array(
    'renewal_date' =>  array('required', 'date_format:"m/d/Y"')
    );

This is pure PHP test for it:

print_r(date_parse_from_format("m/d/Y", "04/01/2013"));

You can also do it manually in Laravel to test:

$v = Validator::make(['date' => '09/26/13'], ['date' => 'date_format:"m/d/Y"']);
var_dump( $v->passes() );

To me it's printing

boolean true

Solution 3

I got a similar problem, but with a d/m/Y date format. In my case, the problem was that I defined both "date" and "date_format" rules for the same field:

public static $rules = array(
    'birthday' => 'required|date|date_format:"d/m/Y"',
    ...

The solution is to remove the "date" validator: you must not use both. Like this:

public static $rules = array(
    'birthday' => 'required|date_format:"d/m/Y"',
    ...

after that, all is well.

Solution 4

You should use with double quote like "Y-m-d H:i:s"

$rules = array(
    'renewal_date' =>  array('required', 'date_format:"m/d/Y"')
                                                      ^     ^ this ones
);

Discussion about this issue on GitHub: https://github.com/laravel/laravel/pull/1192

View more solutions

Comments

[suncoastkid]

'renewal_date' => array('required', 'date_format:"m/d/Y"') still does not work.

[Bora]

@suncoastkid I guess syntax is wrong. Try without required like $rules = array('renewal_date' => 'date_format:"m/d/Y"');

[suncoastkid]

'renewal_date' => array('required', 'date_format:"m/d/Y"') does not work

[suncoastkid]

Thanks but that still doesn't work... this is so frustrating. This should be simple.

[Antonio Carlos Ribeiro]

Added a standalone test so you can see if it's Laravel or anything else in your code.

[Antonio Carlos Ribeiro]

There is indeed a problem with it, some warnings are not being processed. Just posted an issue on github: github.com/laravel/laravel/issues/2317.

[suncoastkid]

Workaround: 'renewal_date' => array('required', 'date_format:m/d/Y', 'regex:/[0-9]{2}\/[0-9]{2}\/[0-9]{4}/')

[Joseph Silber]

@AntonioCarlosRibeiro - How do you explain this? sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/…

[Antonio Carlos Ribeiro]

I can`t see anything wrong. That's the normal behaviour of this function.

[Antonio Carlos Ribeiro]

Sorry, it's a PHP bug, just answered it on github.