I am creating a new API call for our project.

We have a table with different locales. Ex:

ID  Code
1   fr_CA
2   en_CA

However, when we are calling the API to create Invoices, we do not want to send the id but the code.

Here's a sample of the object we are sending:

{
   "locale_code": "fr_CA",
   "billing_first_name": "David",
   "billing_last_name": "Etc"
}

In our controller, we are modifying the locale_code to locale_id using a function with an extension of FormRequest:

   // This function is our method in the controller
public function createInvoice(InvoiceCreateRequest $request)
    {
        $validated = $request->convertLocaleCodeToLocaleId()->validated();
}

// this function is part of ApiRequest which extend FormRequest
// InvoiceCreateRequest extend ApiRequest
// So it goes FormRequest -> ApiRequest -> InvoiceCreateRequest
public function convertLocaleCodeToLocaleId()
    {
        if(!$this->has('locale_code'))
            return $this;

        $localeCode = $this->input('locale_code');

        if(empty($localeCode))
            return $this['locale_id'] = NULL;
        
        $locale = Locale::where(Locale::REFERENCE_COLUMN, $localeCode)->firstOrFail();

        $this['locale_id'] = $locale['locale_id'];

        return $this;
    }

If we do a dump of $this->input('locale_id') inside the function, it return the proper ID (1). However, when it goes through validated();, it doesn't return locale_id even if it's part of the rules:

public function rules()
    {
        return [
            'locale_id' => 'sometimes'
        ];
    }

I also tried the function merge, add, set, etc and nothing work.

Any ideas?

CodePudding user response：

The FormRequest will run before it ever gets to the controller. So trying to do this in the controller is not going to work.

The way you can do this is to use the prepareForValidation() method in the FormRequest class.

// InvoiceCreateRequest

protected function prepareForValidation()
{
    // logic here

    $this->merge([
        'locale_id' => $localeId,
    ]);
}