New in Symfony 3.4: Groups support for the Valid constraint

September 15, 2017 Javier Eguiluz

Contributed by
Christian Flothmann
in #21111.

The Valid constraint enables validation on objects that are embedded as properties on the object being validated. This allows you to validate an object and all sub-objects associated with it. For example, validate the Address object embedded in an Author object:

// src/AppBundle/Entity/Address.php
namespace AppBundle\Entity;

use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;

class Address
{
    /** @Assert\NotBlank() */
    protected $street;

    /** @Assert\Length(max = 5) */
    protected $zipCode;
}

// src/AppBundle/Entity/Author.php
namespace AppBundle\Entity;

use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;

class Author
{
    /** @Assert\NotBlank */
    protected $firstName;

    /** @Assert\NotBlank */
    protected $lastName;

    /** @Assert\Valid */
    protected $address;
}

The main shortcoming of this constraint it that it doesn't support validation groups. In Symfony 3.4, we improved the Valid constraint to add support for groups:

// src/AppBundle/Entity/Address.php
// ...
class Address
{
    /** @Assert\NotBlank(groups={"basic"}) */
    protected $street;

    /** @Assert\Length(max = 5) */
    protected $zipCode;
}

// src/AppBundle/Entity/Author.php
// ...
class Author
{
    /** @Assert\NotBlank */
    protected $firstName;

    /** @Assert\NotBlank */
    protected $lastName;

    /** @Assert\Valid(groups={"basic"}) */
    protected $address;
}

In the previous example, the Valid constraint only validates the properties that belong to the basic group in the Address object, so it will only validate the street property and not the zipCode property.

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New in Symfony 3.4: Groups support for the Valid constraint symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-3-4-groups-support-for-the-valid-constraint

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