Preferred way to trim input?

#1

Hi there. Input isn’t passed through Laravel’s TrimStrings middleware so code like below might return values with extra spaces:

$this->validate(['name' => 'required']);

I’ve noticed that the LivewireServiceProvider ignores TrimStrings and ConvertEmptyStringsToNull on purpose, and Caleb has also commented about it here: https://github.com/livewire/livewire/issues/354#issuecomment-553109110

What is the preferred way to trim user input seeing it’s not handled by the framework automatically?

#2

Here’s a copy and paste from a class where keep all my input manipulators that does this.

class InputCleaner
{
    public static function string($input)
    {
        if (blank($input)) {
            return null;
        }
        return Str::of($input)->trim()->title();
    }

Just return the line above the title if you don’t need title case. I’m also thinking of overriding and expanding livewire’s validation to suit what I need, so that’s an option too.

Edit: I edited the function after looking at it again, just remove title off the chain if you don’t need it.

#3

Hi xxdalexx. Thanks. How would you go about calling your escaping method?

Would you call it manually before validation?

public function create()
{
    $this->name = static::string($this->name);

    Repo::create(
        $this->validate(['name' => 'required|max:32|unique:repos'])
    );

    session()->flash('message', 'Repository "'.$this->name.'" was created.');
}

This would work but creates a small situation I’d like to avoid…

If you call it but validation fails, $name would be left containing the trimmed version and this would update the version the user can see. If I wanted to avoid this I could capture the original inputs, check them and replace them if a validation exception occurs:

public function create()
{
    $name = $this->name;

    try {
        $this->name = trim($this->name); // whatever cleaning method

        Repo::create(
            $this->validate(['name' => 'required|max:32|unique:repos'])
        );
    } catch (\Illuminate\Validation\ValidationException $e) {
        $this->name = $name; // replace the original version so what the user sees doesn't change
        throw $e;
    }

    session()->flash('message', 'Repository "'.$this->name.'" was created.');
}

This is rather manual and wordy.

I’m wondering if it’s possible and a good idea for Livewire to change the public properties back to their original values in the case of a ValidationException.

What do you think?

#4

I personally do it in your first way, I don’t care that the users version is trimmed and capitalized.