Laravel 5.2 Validation Help Exist in Database - database

Question

I'm making a simple booking system with the help of Laravel. The times that is booked is for an imaginary car company that rent cars. So you rent a car by booking the time. I'm pretty far into the project and I'm almost finished. I just have a small problem. I dont know how I can make my booked times "not bookable" so to say.
What I want to be unique is the date of the booking. In my migration for the "booked" times (the table is called "times") I have already set the column "date" to be unique:
public function up()
{
Schema::create('times', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->integer('car_id')->unsigned();
$table->date('date');
$table->timestamps();
$table->primary(array('car_id', 'date'));
});
}
The date "integer" makes it so that it is unique and I can not book it twice. But what I want to do is check if the booked time is in the Carbon time frame of the ten days from present day. Those times is made like this:
$dt = Carbon::now('Europe/Stockholm');
for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
$dates[$i] = $dt->addDays(1)->toDateString();
}
Then I send the $dates variable to my view and display them like this:
<ul class="list-group">
#foreach ($dates as $date)
<form method="POST" action="/{{ $car->id }}/time">
{{ csrf_field() }}
<li class="list-group-item">
<input type="hidden" name="date" value="{{ $date }}">
{{ $date }}
<input type="submit" value="Boka" class="btn btn-primary"/>
</li>
</form>
#endforeach
</ul>
So then if I press the "Boka" button the time is put in the "times" table, and because I use relationship I reach it with $car->time, like that I can get all the booked times on that specific car.
I show all the times that are booked like this in my view:
<ul class="list-group">
#foreach ($car->time as $time)
<li class="list-group-item">
{{ $time->date }}
<form method="POST" action="/delete/time/{{ $time->car_id }}/{{ $time->date }}">
{{ method_field('DELETE') }}
{{ csrf_field() }}
<input type="submit" value="Delete" class="btn btn-danger"/>
</form>
</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
So basically what I want to do now is to check if the date from Carbon is in the "times" table I want to remove the "Boka" button from the view..
My teacher tells me to use this code in some way:
$this->validate($request, [
'date' => 'exists:times,date'
]);
I know what this snippet of code does, it checks the request sent if the date from the form exist in the times table on the column date. But I just don't know where to use it. Ive tried in my "TimesController" where I add the dates to the "times" table like this:
public function update(Request $request, Car $car, Time $time) {
$this->validate($request, [
'date' => 'exists:times,date'
]);
$times = new Time;
$times->date = $request->date;
$car->time()->save($times);
return back();
}
But this doesn't work the way I want it to. It checks if the date is in the table, and if it is. It ads it. But the problem is, the date must be unique so I get an error message that says the date isn't unique. That's good but not what I want. So if I add a date that isn't booked yet. It doesn't add the date like it should. I check what error I get by writing this code in my view:
<ul>
#foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
<li>{{ $error }}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
And the error it output said: "The selected date is invalid."
So what I get from that is that my validation code checks if the request is in the database then if it is, the date is added. But if the date isn't already in the "times" table it doesn't get added. That is the exact opposite of what I want..
I tried putting it in my CarsController to where I make up the dates with the help of Carbon as I showed earlier. But I just can't get anything out of that..
I know this post is kinda long. But I wanted to get as much information in as possible. I would really appreciate some help.
TL/DR: What I want to do is use the Validate function in Laravel to check if my dates for booking is in the booked "times" table or not. IF it is then I want the "Boka" button do disappear. The date shouldn't be able to be added to the "times" table. Alternatively the "date" could disappear entirely from the dates made with Carbon if it is in the "times" table...
I really don't know what to do so I would appreciate som help. Thanks.
And yeah, english isn't my native language so please don't bash me.

Answer 1

There are many ways to validate your data in Laravel. I will show you some of them, feel free to choose the one you'll like.
First of all, the basics.
You can use the validate method in the controller method of your choice. The official documentation has a nice example of it.
...
public function store(Request $request)
{
$this->validate($request, [
'title' => 'required|unique:posts|max:255',
'body' => 'required',
]);
...
Your validation rule goes in the second parameter of the method, the array with other rules.
However, this is not the only way you can deal with validation.
As the documentation says in the "Other Validation Approaches" section, you can:
manually create a validator with Validator::make();
make a FormRequest to isolate your validation rules (and, eventually, logic) in a separate class;
Hope it helps. :)

Answer 2

Just check after validate method that if it returns true or false and based on that use return back with errors or proceed further.