Laravel Request & Validation – Beginner’s Guide

In the last lessons, we learned how to show pages using Routes → Controllers → Views.
Now let’s make our pages interactive by handling user input from forms.
To do that, we need to understand Requests and Validation.

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What is a Request in Laravel?

Whenever a user visits a page or submits a form, Laravel creates a Request object containing all the data about that request — like form fields, query parameters, and files.

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Creating a Simple Form

Let’s make a form to collect a user’s name and email.

In resources/views/contact.blade.php:

@extends('layouts.main')

@section('title', 'Contact Us')

@section('content')
    <h2>Contact Form</h2>
    <form action="{{ route('contact.submit') }}" method="POST">
        @csrf
        <label>Name:</label>
        <input type="text" name="name">

        <label>Email:</label>
        <input type="email" name="email">

        <button type="submit">Send</button>
    </form>
@endsection

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Adding a Route

In routes/web.php:

use App\Http\Controllers\ContactController;

Route::get('/contact', [ContactController::class, 'showForm'])->name('contact.show');
Route::post('/contact', [ContactController::class, 'submitForm'])->name('contact.submit');

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Creating the Controller

Run:

php artisan make:controller ContactController

In app/Http/Controllers/ContactController.php:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class ContactController extends Controller
{
    public function showForm()
    {
        return view('contact');
    }

    public function submitForm(Request $request)
    {
        // Validation will go here
    }
}

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Validating User Input

Laravel’s $request->validate() method makes validation super simple.

Example:

public function submitForm(Request $request)
{
    $request->validate([
        'name'  => 'required|min:3',
        'email' => 'required|email'
    ]);

    return "Form submitted successfully!";
}

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Showing Validation Errors in the View

Blade provides $errors to display validation messages.

In contact.blade.php, above the form:

@if($errors->any())
    <div style="color: red;">
        <ul>
            @foreach($errors->all() as $error)
                <li>{{ $error }}</li>
            @endforeach
        </ul>
    </div>
@endif

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Preserving Old Input

If validation fails, Laravel redirects back with the old input.
You can keep previous values like this:

<input type="text" name="name" value="{{ old('name') }}">
<input type="email" name="email" value="{{ old('email') }}">

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Common Validation Rules

Rule	Description
required	Field must not be empty
email	Must be a valid email address
min:x	Minimum length of x
max:x	Maximum length of x
numeric	Must be a number
unique:table	Value must be unique in a database

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Conclusion:
We can now handle forms, validate user input, and show error messages — an essential step toward building real applications.