Limit for posting comments - php

Question

I'm trying for a couple of days now to limit the amount of comments that can be posted by a user.
So after the user submits a comment he should wait for example 5 minutes, to be able to post the next comment.
I know that this can be accomplished by the laravel validator with the 'after' rule. But I've tried a couple of things now and nothing worked out yet.
Here's the Code of the method:
public function storeComment($id, Request $request)
{
$user = User::with('newsComment')->find(Auth::user()->id);
if ($user->NewsComment->count() != 0)
{
$last_comment = NewsComment::where('author_id', Auth::user()->id)->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->first();
$date_after = new \DateTime($last_comment->created_at);
$date_after->modify('+5 minutes');
} else {
$date_after = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", mktime(0, 0, 0, 00, 00, 0000));
}
$request->current_date = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
$this->validate($request, [
'comment' => 'required|max:255|min:5',
'current_date' => 'after:'.$date_after->format("Y-m-d H:i:s"),
]);
$comment = new NewsComment;
$comment->news_article_id = $id;
$comment->author_id = Auth::user()->id;
$comment->comment = $request->comment;
$comment->save();
return $this->showArticle($id);
}
So, I know, that this code reads the correct time out of the database and adds the 5 minutes to the given date. In the template I added an empty, hidden form field named 'current_date'. In the method above I fill this variable with the current date and try to validate it with the 'after' validation rule.
But for some reason it won't work.
I hope some of you can help me with this.
I'm btw new to laravel so please bear with me.

Answer 1

Instead of $comment->save(); you can check if the comment is saved and flash in the Session the current timestamp then compare with "Now" after the validation.
if($comment->save()){
$request->session()->put('post_time', Carbon::now());
}
and after validation:
if ($request->session()->has('post_time')) {
if(Carbon::now()->diffInMinutes($request->session()->get('post_time')) < 5){
//stop execution
}
}