Laravel 5.7 validate fields with asterisk, required_if - php

Question

I have a Vue form that let users add work experience for there profile.
Users can add extra experience by clicking on a button. Clicking on that will add an new item with new input fields. I can't add the whole script because it's quit big. But here is an example to give you an idea:
<div class="item">
<div class="row">
<div class="form-group col-md-6">
<label class="form-label">Title</label>
<input type="text" name="experiences[0][title]" class="form-control">
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-6">
<label class="form-label">Institution</label>
<input type="text" name="experiences[0][institution]" class="form-control">
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-12">
<textarea name="experiences[0][comments]" class="form-control"></textarea>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="item">
<div class="row">
<div class="form-group col-md-6">
<label class="form-label">Title </label>
<input type="text" name="experiences[1][title]" class="form-control">
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-6">
<label class="form-label">institution </label>
<input type="text" name="experiences[1][institution]" class="form-control">
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-12">
<textarea name="experiences[1][comments]" class="form-control"></textarea>
</div>
</div>
</div>
After each element there is a button to add a new row. This works fine but I have some validation issues.
I only want to validate the fields if one of the fields has a value. For example:
If experiences[0][institution] has a value, experiences[0][title] and experiences[0][comments] are required.
This has to work in every order. If title has a value, the other fields are required.
I can't really find out a way how to validate this. This is my validation rule:
$this->validate(request(), [
'experiences.*.title' => 'required_if:experiences.*.institution,null',
'experiences.*.institution' => 'required_if:experiences.*.title,null',
]);
Problem here is that it simply doesn't validate. I can't figure out how to make a rule that says, if field X has a value, Y and Z are required.
Hope anyone here can help me finding a solution! :)

Answer 1

Like Azeame said, make a custom validation rule and check if all values are filled or all are empty. Something in de lines of:
public function passes($attribute, $value)
{
$required = ['title','institution','comments'];
$experience = collect($value)->reject(function ($item, $key) {
return empty($item);
});
if (count($experience) == 0) {
return true;
}
foreach ($required as $field) {
if ( !$experience->has($field)) {
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
Maybe there is a beter way, but this should work.

Answer 2

required_if doesn't work with null as it will treat it as a string ("null"), it will work with boolean values though.
Instead you can use the required_without rule:
$this->validate(request(), [
"experiences.*.title" => "required_without:experiences.*.institution",
"experiences.*.institution" => "required_without:experiences.*.title",
]);
Example
$experiences = [
[
"title" => "My title",
"institution" => "",
"comments" => "<p>My first description</p>", //passes
],
[
"title" => "",
"institution" => "My title",
"comments" => "<p>My second description</p>", //passes
],
[
"title" => "My title",
"institution" => "My title",
"comments" => "<p>My third description</p>", //passes
],
[
"title" => "",
"institution" => null,
"comments" => "<p>My forth description</p>", //fails
],
];
$rules = [
"experiences.*.title" => "required_without:experiences.*.institution",
"experiences.*.institution" => "required_without:experiences.*.title",
];
$validator = Validator::make(compact('experiences'), $rules);
dd($validator->fails());

Answer 3

Write a custom rule with php artisan make:rule and in the passes() function write a check to ensure that all of the array keys are present and also that at least 2 of the array values are not null. I'm thinking something like this:
function passes($attribute, $value){
if(array_keys($value) !== ['title','institution','comments']){
return false;
}
if(empty($value['title']) && empty($value['institution'])){
return false;
}
return true;
}
and in your $this->validate pass the rule as ['experiences.*' =>['array', new CustomRule()] instead of required_if...
I haven't checked this so feel free to edit if it's broken.