Understanding Laravel Validation: sometimes vs nullable

Olujimi Sanwo
3 min readAug 17, 2024
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Sometimes: In some cases, you may want to perform validation checks on a field only if it appears in the input array.

Null: The field under validation may be null. This is especially handy when validating simple types like strings and integers, which can contain null values.

Sometimes

In Laravel, the sometimes validation rule enables you to apply validation rules to a field only under specific conditions. This is handy when you don’t always need to validate a field based on the presence of another field or a different condition.

How Does It Work?

Example 1: Conditional Validation Based on Another Field

Imagine you have a form where users can update their profile. The form has fields for name, email, and an optional phone number. You only want to validate the phone field if the user provides it.

What happens:

  • name and email are always required.
  • phone is validated only if it is present in the request. If the user doesn’t provide…

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