Laravel Validation: check why validator failed

Question

If there a way to check whether or not the validator failed specifically because of the unique rule?

$rules = array(
            'email_address' => 'required|email|unique:users,email',
            'postal_code' => 'required|alpha_num',
        );

        $messages = array(
            'required' => 'The :attribute field is required',
            'email' => 'The :attribute field is required',
            'alpha_num' => 'The :attribute field must only be letters and numbers (no spaces)'
        );

        $validator = Validator::make(Input::all(), $rules, $messages);

        if ($validator->fails()) {

In laymans terms, I basically want to know: "did the validation fail because the email_address was not unique?"

Solution

Check for a specific rule within the returned array of failed rules

if ($validator->fails()) {

    $failedRules = $validator->failed();

    if(isset($failedRules['email_address']['Unique'])) {

    ...

Comments

[dcolumbus]

Yes, but I need to know what failed within my controller, before getting to the view.

[Lynx]

Well in your controller you can use that same foreach and it will display in your controller. I edited my answer so you can see

[dcolumbus]

$errors->all() produces Call to a member function all() on a non-object

[Lynx]

Sorry, yeah that won't work because it's supposed to redirect back to your previous page anyways. I will update the answer.

[Lynx]

Check my answer you may just be able to var dump the results using var_dump($validation->errors()); die;

[dcolumbus]

Converted to json, it seems to return {"email_address":{"Unique":["users","email"]}}

[im_brian_d]

updated. You have to check against it by field, each field having its own array of rules.

[dcolumbus]

Almost, but it's still always returning false, even though I can see that it's true.

[im_brian_d]

Updated, the rule Unique is a key, so in_array didn't work :) so instead I used isset