how to ignore soft delete in laravel multiple unique columns in laravel 5.3

Question

I have been doing a project right now. In this I am stuck. All I want that to ignore soft delete of laravel in my validation that has unique column of name, parent_id.

For example : Suppose A & B is category. I want that If C is a subcategory of A then no other C data is not written in A. But C can be written in B category.

I also want that If a User SoftDeletes the data then he can insert same data with the same name and with the same category.

My Table is

Schema::create('categories', function (Blueprint $table) {
  $table->increments('id');
  $table->string('name');
  $table->integer('parent_id')->nullable()->default(0);
  $table->integer('admin_id')->nullable()->default(0);
  $table->boolean('active')->nullable()->default(1);
  $table->unique(array('parent_id', 'name', 'deleted_at'));
  $table->rememberToken();
  $table->timestamps();
  $table->softDeletes();
});

My Store method is

public function store(Request $request)
{
  $this->validate($request, [
    'category' => 'required|unique:categories,parent_id,NULL,name,NULL,id,deleted_at,NULL',
    'parent' => 'required',
    '_token'   => '',
  ]);

  try {
    $category = New Category();
    $category->name = $request['category'];
    $category->parent_id = $request['parent'];
    $category->remember_token = $request['_token'];
    $category->save();
    $request->session()->flash('alert-success', 'Sub Category Successfully Created!');
    return redirect('subcategory');    
  } catch(\Illuminate\Database\QueryException $e) {
    return redirect()->back()
                     ->with('status','<strong>'.$category.' already exist!</strong>');
  }            
}

My model is

<?php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

class Category extends Model
{
  use Notifiable;
  use SoftDeletes;
  protected $fillable = [
    'category',
  ];
  protected $dates = ['deleted_at'];
}

The Error is

Answer 1

Try

‘category' => 'required|unique:categories,parent_id,NULL,id,deleted_at,NULL,name,’.$request['category'], 

For more details, separate the parameters into pairs:

1. [categories, parent_id]

   • This means the unique rule should be implemented in the table categories, column parent_id.

   • If the position of parent_id is same with the left “category”, it can be ignore. E.g

     ‘name’ => ‘unique:products,name’ can be simplified to

     ‘name’ => ‘unique:products’.

2. [NULL, id]

   • The unique rule should exclude the item where id is null.
   • It looks like nonsense, because id cannot be null.
   • But this pair is a special one. In the Laravel unique validation (vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Validation/Concerns/ValidatesAttributes.php:getUniqueIds()), it defines parameters the third position a special one. As long as you want to attach other constraints after, you need this. Just like a format.
   • Once again, this is a special pair. In the update validation, you can pass in the id to ignore the updated item itself.

3. [deleted_at, NULL]

   • The unique rule should implement in the scope where deleted_at is null.
   • The is where you consider the soft delete.
   • You can use NOT_NULL to mean the opposite.

Therefore, the final scope to implement the unique rule is the results get from below query:

    Select count(*) from categories
    where id is not null
    and deleted_at is null
    and name is ??$request['category']??

If the count(*) is 0, then the validation get through. Otherwise, fail.

You can have as many constraints as you need after the third pair. such as:

=> 4. [active, true]

=> 5. [name, hello], you can use '!hello' to mean where the name is not 'hello'