Laravel nullable validation rule not working - php

Question

I recently upgraded to laravel 5.4 (from 5.2) to make use of the nullable validation rule.
I have a field act_post_code which can be either an integer OR null. So I provided the following rule in my Request class.
'act_post_code' => 'integer|nullable'
In Postman using form-data, I provide a key = act_post_code with its value = null.
The response I get is the following:
{
"act_post_code": [
"The act post code must be an integer."
]
}

Answer 1

Explanation:
Unfortunately, it seems that nullable is only valid with certain other validations.
For example: 'act_post_code' => 'nullable|integer' will give you the error: "validation.integer"
However, 'act_post_code' => 'nullable|date' works fine.
Fix:
As a work around for these validations, you can make them dynamic. For example, before the validator:
$act_post_code_rules = $request->act_post_code ? 'integer' : '';
then, within the validate:
'act_post_code' => $act_post_code_rules

Answer 2

In order to validate the field act_post_code which can be either be of type integer or nullable, you can try out the following :
When declaring in the migration ,the Schema of the table where there is the column act_post_code declare the column like $table->integer('act_post_code')->nullable();
This one might just work for you to validate 'act_post_code' =>'sometimes|nullable|integer'

Answer 3

One can die and dump request parameters and check whether the actual value is null or "null" (in string). Sometimes when submitting a form via javascript we use FormData() to append data to the form, in those scenarios it may send a null value as in string type "null"
array:5 [
"firstName" => "Kaustubh"
"middleName" => "null" // null as string
"lastName" => "Bagwe"
"contactNumber" => null // null value
"photo" => null
"_method" => "PUT"
]

Answer 4

Open your migration file and make the this field as nullable
For e.g
Schema::create('your_table_name', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->integer('act_post_code ')->nullable();
});
Make sure it is present in your model file in the fillable section
protected $fillable = ['act_post_code'];

Answer 5

After Some Test I found that nullable rule only work if only the data that we pass really was a null data.
so in my test case i use the validation rule like this :
"counter" => "nullable|numeric"
and in the blade file, I use Form::text('counter','') as element to input my data.
Then i use it with few test case:
When I input the counter data with a non-numeric value it will response with error: "the counter must be a number".
When I input the counter data with a numeric value it will pass the validation test.
When I not input any data to the counter it will pass the validation test.
so i check the data manually using dd($request_data)or if you using ajax just return $request_data and print it using console.log("data") like:
$.ajax({
type:'POST',
data:{_token:"{{ csrf_token() }}",
counter:$('input[name="counter"]').val()
},success:function(data){
console.log(data);
}
});
and found out that when input field is emptied it will give the null value.