An easy way to “test” my package on a new version of Laravel

Yesterday I received a PR (thanks Javier Núñez) to update one of my packages that I wrote some while ago to validate the European VAT.

I started to develop a Laravel Package [laravel-vat-eu-validator] for fun and testing my abilities.
Everything’s started when I saw this 💩:

public static function controllaPIVA($pi)
    {
        if ($pi === '') return false;
        if (strlen($pi) != 11)
            return false;
        if (strlen($pi) == 11) {
            if (preg_match("/^[0-9]+\$/D", $pi) != 1)
                return false;
            $s = 0;
            for ($i = 0; $i <= 9; $i += 2)
                $s += ord($pi[$i]) - ord('0');
            for ($i = 1; $i <= 9; $i += 2) {
                $c = 2 * (ord($pi[$i]) - ord('0'));
                if ($c > 9) $c = $c - 9;
                $s += $c;
            }
            if ((10 - $s % 10) % 10 != ord($pi[10]) - ord('0'))
                return false;
        } 
        return true;
    }

wait.

I can’t even read it, at first look it’s impossible to understand, you wouldn’t either. My head is blowing up.

I spent a lot of time trying to understand the code above, finally today I realized it was wrong and a bad implementation of Luhn algorithm. I will talk about refactor in a new post (luhn-example).

It’s seems the Italian VAT is validated by Lhun Algo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT_identification_number like the SIM serial number and the credit card number.

So I wrote this super clean and simple class:

<?php

namespace Danielebarbaro\LaravelVatEuValidator;

use Danielebarbaro\LaravelVatEuValidator\Vies\Client;

class VatValidator
{
    /**
     * Regular expression patterns per country code
     *
     * @var array
     * @link http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/faq.html?locale=en#item_11
     */
    protected static $pattern_expression = array(
        'AT' => 'U[A-Z\d]{8}',
        'BE' => '(0\d{9}|\d{10})',
        'BG' => '\d{9,10}',
        'CY' => '\d{8}[A-Z]',
        'CZ' => '\d{8,10}',
        'DE' => '\d{9}',
        'DK' => '(\d{2} ?){3}\d{2}',
        'EE' => '\d{9}',
        'EL' => '\d{9}',
        'ES' => '[A-Z]\d{7}[A-Z]|\d{8}[A-Z]|[A-Z]\d{8}',
        'FI' => '\d{8}',
        'FR' => '([A-Z]{2}|\d{2})\d{9}',
        'GB' => '\d{9}|\d{12}|(GD|HA)\d{3}',
        'HR' => '\d{11}',
        'HU' => '\d{8}',
        'IE' => '[A-Z\d]{8}|[A-Z\d]{9}',
        'IT' => '\d{11}',
        'LT' => '(\d{9}|\d{12})',
        'LU' => '\d{8}',
        'LV' => '\d{11}',
        'MT' => '\d{8}',
        'NL' => '\d{9}B\d{2}',
        'PL' => '\d{10}',
        'PT' => '\d{9}',
        'RO' => '\d{2,10}',
        'SE' => '\d{12}',
        'SI' => '\d{8}',
        'SK' => '\d{10}'
    );

    /**
     * Vies Client.
     */
    private $client;

    /**
     * VatValidator constructor.
     * @param Client|null $client
     */
    public function __construct(Client $client = null)
    {
        $this->client = $client;

        if (!$this->client) {
            $this->client = new Client();
        }
    }

    /**
     * Validate a VAT number format.
     * @param string $vatNumber
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function validateFormat(string $vatNumber): bool
    {
        $vatNumber = $this->vatCleaner($vatNumber);
        list($country, $number) = $this->splitVat($vatNumber);

        if (!isset(self::$pattern_expression[$country])) {
            return false;
        }

        return preg_match('/^' . self::$pattern_expression[$country] . '$/', $number) > 0;
    }

    /**
     * Check existence VAT number
     * @param string $vatNumber
     * @return boolean
     * @throws Vies\ViesException
     */
    public function validateExistence(string $vatNumber): bool
    {
        $vatNumber = $this->vatCleaner($vatNumber);
        $result = $this->validateFormat($vatNumber);
        if ($result) {
            list($country, $number) = $this->splitVat($vatNumber);
            $result = $this->client->check($country, $number);
        }
        return $result;
    }

    /**
     * Validates a VAT number .
     *
     * @param string $vatNumber Either the full VAT number (incl. country).
     * @return boolean
     * @throws Vies\ViesException
     */
    public function validate(string $vatNumber): bool
    {
        return $this->validateFormat($vatNumber) && $this->validateExistence($vatNumber);
    }

    /**
     * @param string $vatNumber
     * @return string
     */
    private function vatCleaner(string $vatNumber): string
    {
        $vatNumber_no_spaces = trim($vatNumber);
        return strtoupper($vatNumber_no_spaces);
    }

    /**
     * @param string $vatNumber
     * @return array
     */
    private function splitVat(string $vatNumber): array
    {
        return [
            substr($vatNumber, 0, 2),
            substr($vatNumber, 2)
        ];
    }

}

and then I have created a Laravel package.

When I received the PR I thought “Thanks God my package has tests”, thus it was super easy to extend the compatibility.

Every test passed so I merged the PR.

But for me it wasn’t enough, I would test it on a fresh L7 installation.

$ composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel laravel-seven

I added in composer.json just after "require-dev"

"repositories": {
    "dev-laravel-vat-eu-validator": {
        "type": "path",
        "url": "laravel-vat-eu-validator",
        "options": {
            "symlink": true
        }
    }
},

I cloned in laravel-seven path my repo:

$ cd laravel-seven $ git clone git@github.com:danielebarbaro/laravel-vat-eu-validator.git

So now I have my package in a specific folder and (eventually) I could switch branch easily directly in laravel-vat-eu-validator folder.

I wrote a simple controller:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Http\Response;

class VatTesterController extends Controller
{

    /**
     * Show the form for creating a new resource.
     *
     * @return Response
     */
    public function create()
    {
        return view('vat');
    }

    /**
     * Store a newly created resource in storage.
     *
     * @param  Request  $request
     * @return string
     */
    public function store(Request $request)
    {
        $request->validate([
            'vat' => 'required|vat_number_exist|vat_number|vat_number_format',
        ]);

        return 'Well Done.';
    }
}

I wrote a clean blade:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Package test</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter-bootstrap/4.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css"/>
</head>
<body class="bg-light">
<div class="container">
    <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-6 offset-3 mt-5">
            <div class="card ">
                <div class="card-header bg-dark text-light">
                    <h5>VAT Form Tester</h5>
                </div>
                <div class="card-body">
                    @if (count($errors) > 0)
                        <div class="alert alert-danger">
                            <ul>
                                @foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
                                    <li>{{ $error }}</li>
                                @endforeach
                            </ul>
                        </div>
                    @endif

                    <form action="{{ route('vat.store') }}" method="POST">
                        @csrf
                        <div class="form-group">
                            <label>Vat : </label>
                            <input type="text" name="vat" class="form-control">
                        </div>
                        <div class="form-group text-center">
                            <input type="submit" class="btn btn-success" name="submit" value="Check">
                        </div>
                    </form>
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

I added default routes:

Route::get('vat-verify','VatTesterController@create')->name('vat.create');
Route::post('vat-verify','VatTesterController@store')->name('vat.store');

I added in validation.php all necessary strings:

'vat_number' => 'The :attribute must be a valid VAT number.',
'vat_number_format' => 'The :attribute must be write in a valid number format {country_name}{vat_number}.',
'vat_number_exist' => 'VAT number :attribute  not exist.',

and once I started the application with $ php artisan serve, on http://localhost:8000/vat-verify magic happened