[12.x] feat: add now methods to Date rule

[calebdw]

Hello!

Motivation

I just had a bug in production where a developer (me 🙃) was validating a datetime with:

'request_at'  => [Rule::date()->beforeOrEqual(now())],

However, this caused failures when the datetime was the current day and had a time component. The fix was:

'request_at'  => [Rule::date()->beforeOrEqual('now')], // do not use now()

which is not very elegant and requires a comment to prevent future develepers from causing a regression.

Additionally, we have a ton of datetime fields that need to be validated and don't want to have to repeatedly specify ->format('Y-m-d H:i:s')

Solution

What I would like is

'request_at'  => [Rule::date()->andTime()->nowOrBefore()],

This adds the following methods to the Date validation rule:

• beforeNow
• afterNow
• nowOrBefore
• nowOrAfter
• andTime

Thanks!

[taylorotwell]

@calebdw can you give me a bit more detail on why your original attempt didn't work for you?

'request_at'  => [Rule::date()->beforeOrEqual(now())],

[calebdw]

@taylorotwell

Yes, so when a carbon instance is passed it's truncated to just the date, but when the string is passed it gets resolved to a full datetime later on:

framework/src/Illuminate/Validation/Rules/Date.php

Lines 128 to 132 in 0a24afd

	protected function formatDate(DateTimeInterface|string $date): string
	{
	return $date instanceof DateTimeInterface
	? $date->format($this->format ?? 'Y-m-d')
	: $date;

The only two possible fixes are:

'request_at'  => [Rule::date()->format('Y-m-d H:i:s')->beforeOrEqual(now())],
// or 
'request_at'  => [Rule::date()->beforeOrEqual('now')], // do not use now()

both of which are not really as clean as they could be:

'request_at'  => [Rule::date()->andTime()->nowOrBefore()],

[taylorotwell]

Could you just add a method to the Rule class something like this:

public static function dateTime()
{
    return (new Date)->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
}

[calebdw]

Sure, I can do that. Would you still be opposed to the now methods? They are a mirror of the today methods (e.g., todayOrBefore), or maybe something like inFuture or inPast?

[rodrigopedra]

@calebdw can we use the naming already used by Carbon?

now()->isPast();        // beforeNow
now()->isFuture();      // afterNow
now()->isNowOrPast();   // nowOrBefore
now()->isNowOrFuture(); // nowOrAfter

IMO, they would be easier to remember for those familiar with these methods.

[calebdw]

I'm not opposed to that, just want to hear @taylorotwell 's thoughts

[calebdw]

Thank you sir!