Laravel 5.1 Combine Form Request and Validator - php

Question

I'm using form requests class. Work fine:
class EventFormRequest extends FormRequest
{
public function rules()
{
return [
'event' => 'required|min:10|max:255',
'event_description' => 'required|min:3|max:255',
'url' => 'url',
'date' => 'required|date',
'start_time' => 'required',
'location.street' => 'required|max:255',
'location.house_number' => 'required|min:1|max:5',
'location.place' => 'required|max:255'
];
}
}
But now, I have to add complexer rules, such as combined with Validator. Below the new rules() method of my EventFormRequest class:
public function rules()
{
$v = \Validator::make($this->request->all(),
[
'event' => 'required|min:10|max:255',
'event_description' => 'required|min:3|max:255',
'url' => 'url',
'date' => 'required|date',
'start_time' => 'required',
'location.street' => 'required|max:255',
'location.house_number' => 'required|min:1|max:5',
'location.place' => 'required|max:255'
]);
$v->sometimes('category_id', 'required|numeric', function($input) {
return $input->event_type == 'known';
});
return ($v->fails() ? $v->messages() : []); // validator validates the rules, but returns the messages
}
You see, category_id is required if the event type is 'known'. In the form request rules() method, I cannot return the applied rules as array (see example 1) from the validator, but only the messages().
I'm inspired from here: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/validation#conditionally-adding-rules

Answer 1

class EventFormRequest extends FormRequest
{
public function rules()
{
$rules = [
'event' => 'required|min:10|max:255',
'event_description' => 'required|min:3|max:255',
'url' => 'url',
'date' => 'required|date',
'start_time' => 'required',
'location.street' => 'required|max:255',
'location.house_number' => 'required|min:1|max:5',
'location.place' => 'required|max:255'
];
if ($this->request->get('event_type') == 'known') {
$rules['category_id'] = 'required|numeric';
}
return $rules;
}
}