Unique validation in Laravel with example

Laravel also support validation for database operations. Laravel unique validation validates the table column uniqueness using unique validation. In this tutorial we will learn about the unique validation to table columns and also while updating the value too.

you can use this to check the uniqueness of email, username , name and id etc in any version of laravel 5, laravel 6, laravel 7, laravel 8 and laravel 9.

We will use one Laravel rules to validate the email here

unique

So, it can be use in any controller or route as below

unique:table_name,column_name,except_column_id,column_name_in_table

Lets’ take a example posts table:

Table Name : Posts

id	name	status	updated_at	created_at

unique:posts,name,2,id

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator;

class PostController extends Controller
{

 function validateUnique($request Request){
   $validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
            'name' => ['required','unique:posts']
        ]); 
}
}

Here, we used unique:posts unique is rule name and posts is table name.

Column name is different from form name

if column name is different from column name of table then we can pass second parameter to unique validation

 $validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
           'form_name' => ['required','unique:posts,name']
  ]);

Unique validation while updating the model

 $validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
           'form_name' => ['required','unique:posts,name,'.($id=='' ? 0 :  $id).',']
  ]);

Let’s learn with simple example

Step 1 : Create a controller

Create the controller and add the necessary imports and class. You can create by Laravel artisan or manually.

php artisan make:controller PostController

Now, add use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator; and methods

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Http\Response;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator;

class PostController extends Controller
{

    
    public function create()
    {
        return view('post.create');
    }

    public function save(Request $request, $id='')
    {
        $validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
            'name' => ['required','unique:posts,name,'.($id=='' ? 0 :  $id).',id']
            
        ]); // create the validations
        if ($validator->fails())   //check all validations are fine, if not then redirect and show error messages
        {
            
            return back()->withInput()->withErrors($validator);
            // validation failed redirect back to form

        }
        else
        {
            //handle the form 
        }  
    }
   
}

Here, we added image validation using image,mimes and dimension.

Step 2 : Create Routes

Second step is to create the routes to show the form and submit the form

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use \App\Http\Controllers\PostController;


Route::get('/create-post',[PostController::class, 'create']);
Route::post('/save-post',[PostController::class, 'save']);
Route::post('/save-post/$id',[PostController::class, 'save']);

Here, we created 3 routes one for show the form, second for create new post and third for updating the form.

Step 3 : Create the view for form

We have created routes and controller and now we need to create the form so we are creating the view file for it.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="{{ str_replace('_', '-', app()->getLocale()) }}">
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

        <title>Readerstacks laravel 8 unique validation</title>
 <link href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.1.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />
   </head>
    <body class="antialiased">
    <div class="container">
    <!-- main app container -->
    <div class="readersack">
      <div class="container">
        <div class="row">
          <div class="col-md-6 offset-md-3">
            <h3>Laravel 8 unique validation - Readerstacks</h3>
            @if ($errors->any())
                <div class="alert alert-danger">
                    <ul>
                        @foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
                            <li>{{ $error }}</li>
                        @endforeach
                    </ul>
                </div>
            @endif
            <form method="post" action="{{url('submit-post')}}" name="registerform">
             <div class="form-group">
                <label>Name</label>
                <input type="text" name="name" value="{{old('name')}}"  class="form-control" />
                @csrf
              </div>
               
            
              <div class="form-group">
                <button class="btn btn-primary">Post</button>
              </div>
            </form>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
    <!-- credits -->
    <div class="text-center">
      <p>
        <a href="#" target="_top">Laravel 8 unique validation </a>
      </p>
      <p>
        <a href="https://readerstacks.com" target="_top">readerstacks.com</a>
      </p>
    </div>
  </div>
    </body>
</html>

Column name is different from form name

Unique validation while updating the model

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