I’m still going with the Laravel port. One thing I’ve found really interesting is custom validators. In Laravel models you can set field rules, such as…

public static $rules = array(
    'name'                => 'required|alpha_spaces|unique:jars',
    'ownerID'             => 'integer',
    'isBreedingJar'       => 'boolean',
    'capacity'            => 'integer|max:15',
    'comment'             => 'between:0,32|alpha_spaces',
);

{:lang=“php”}

In the vanilla PHP version I had to perform a check in updateSnail() - if the modified field was currentJarID, I had to find the number of snails inside a jar with that same ID and compare the jar’s capacity to the count of those snails. If capacity <= current snail count, the snail was not allowed to be placed into that jar.

With Laravel, I hacked together the same thing in the form of a new validation rule. This way I don’t have to explicitly perform this check whenever I move a snail myself - I just set the rule name in the rules array for the Snail model and it does the rest whenever it sees the snail’s currentJarID being modified.

I plan on changing this when I can see better ways of doing this. For now, setting it up like this seems to work:

1) Create app/validators.php

2) Extend Validator with your own rule

Validator::extend('limited_jar_space', function($attribute, $value, $parameters)
{
	$jarID = Input::get('currentJarID');

	$jarController = new JarController();
	$jar = $jarController->getJarDetails($jarID, 'capacity');
	
	$snailController = new SnailController();
	$snailCount = count($snailController->findSnailsInJar($jarID));

	if ($jar->capacity <= $snailCount) {
		return false;
	}
	return true;
});

{:lang=“php”}

3) Create a custom error message in lang/x/validation.php

"limited_jar_space"		=> "The jar is full!",

{:lang=“php”}

4) Add app/validators.php to start/global.php

require app_path().'/validators.php';

{:lang=“php”}

5) So now I can use the rule "limited_jar_space" for currentJarID in the snail model to make sure the jar a user is trying to move their snail to has enough space left.

public static $rules = array(
    'name'              	 => 'alpha_spaces|unique:snails',
    'ownerID'                => 'integer',
    'currentJarID'           => 'integer|limited_jar_space',
);

{:lang=“php”}