README

Reusable Laravel rules with inclusive calendar-day boundaries, application timezone handling, rule objects, and pipe syntax.

Requires PHP 8.2+ and Laravel 12 or 13 (Laravel 13 requires PHP 8.3+).

Installation

Install the package in any Laravel application with Composer:

composer require shakil3334413/date-validation

Laravel discovers the service provider automatically. If discovery is disabled, register Shakil\DateValidation\DateValidationServiceProvider in the application's providers.

This package is distributed through Packagist from the public GitHub repository. Stable releases use semantic version tags such as v1.0.0.

Local Development Install

This repository is a Composer package. No Laravel application, Nginx virtual host, npm build, or compiled assets are needed here.

For local testing before a release, add this repository to the consuming Laravel application's composer.json:

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "/var/www/html/date-validation",
            "options": {
                "symlink": true,
                "versions": {"shakil3334413/date-validation": "dev-production"}
            }
        }
    ]
}

Run in that application:

composer require shakil3334413/date-validation:dev-production

Usage

$request->validate([
    'start_date' => 'required|date|relative_min:today',
    'end_date' => ['required', 'date', 'relative_max:week'],
    'appointment' => 'required|date|relative_min:today|relative_max:week',
]);

Or use objects:

use Shakil\DateValidation\Rules\RelativeMinDate;
use Shakil\DateValidation\Rules\RelativeMaxDate;

$request->validate([
    'appointment' => [
        'required',
        'date',
        new RelativeMinDate('today'),
        new RelativeMaxDate('week'),
    ],
]);

Laravel's existing min / max rules validate numbers, string lengths, array sizes, and file sizes. This package never replaces them. Use relative_min / relative_max for dates.

Boundaries

For today = 2026-09-09:

Offset	relative_min (on or after)	relative_max (on or before)
today	2026-09-09	2026-09-09
yesterday	2026-09-08	2026-09-08
week	2026-09-02	2026-09-16
month	2026-08-09	2026-10-09
year	2025-09-09	2027-09-09
7	2026-09-02	2026-09-16
30	2026-08-10	2026-10-09

'date' => 'required|date|relative_min:today|relative_max:today', // Today only.
'date' => 'required|date|relative_min:week|relative_max:week', // Seven days each side.
'date' => 'required|date|relative_min:30|relative_max:30', // Thirty days each side.

A minimum alone allows all later dates; a maximum alone allows all earlier dates.

Keywords are lowercase and exact. Numeric offsets are positive whole days, as integers or decimal digit strings, within PHP/Carbon's representable range. Zero, negatives, fractions, leading zeroes, unknown keywords, and missing/extra parameters are configuration errors and throw InvalidArgumentException.

Month/year calculations use Carbon's no-overflow arithmetic: January 31 + one month is February 28/29; February 29 + one year is February 28.

Dates and timezone

Both 2026-09-09 and 2026-09-09 12:30:00 work, along with absolute date strings supported by PHP/Carbon and DateTimeInterface objects. Invalid calendar dates and relative phrases such as "tomorrow" fail. Include Laravel's date rule for normal date validation, or date_format:Y-m-d when an exact format is required.

Comparisons use calendar dates in config('app.timezone'), ignoring time of day after timezone conversion. Thus relative_max:today includes 23:59:59 today. Explicit timezone offsets are converted to the application timezone first; this can change the calendar date. Inputs without a timezone use the application timezone. Day arithmetic uses calendar days across daylight-saving transitions.

Today is evaluated at validation time, so reused rule objects do not retain yesterday's boundary.

These are non-implicit rules. Add required to reject missing/empty values, and nullable to accept null.

Messages

Defaults include:

The start date must be today or later.
The end date must be yesterday or earlier.
The appointment must be on or after 2026-08-10.
The appointment must be on or before 2026-10-09.

Exact boundary wording is intentional: a minimum alone does not enforce an upper limit, so "within the last month" could incorrectly imply future dates are rejected.

Pipe rules support Laravel's per-field messages:

$request->validate(
    ['appointment' => 'required|date|relative_min:30'],
    ['appointment.relative_min' => 'Choose :attribute on or after :boundary (:offset days).'],
    ['appointment' => 'appointment date'],
);

You can also define relative_min / relative_max entries in lang/en/validation.php. Placeholders: :attribute, :boundary (YYYY-MM-DD), and :offset.

Customize defaults for both APIs:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=relative-date-translations

Edit lang/vendor/relative-date/en/validation.php, or add the same file under another locale. Keys: min, max, min_today, max_today, min_yesterday, max_yesterday. Laravel custom attribute names work with both APIs. Object defaults use package translation keys; global validation.relative_min / validation.relative_max overrides apply to pipe rules.

Add keywords

In your application's service provider boot method:

use Carbon\CarbonImmutable;
use Shakil\DateValidation\RelativeDate;

app(RelativeDate::class)->extend(
    'fortnight',
    fn (CarbonImmutable $today, string $direction): CarbonImmutable =>
        $today->addDays($direction === 'min' ? -14 : 14),
);

Both APIs now accept fortnight. Return a CarbonImmutable boundary; the package normalizes it to the application calendar day.

Development and branches

Package directory: /var/www/html/date-validation inside Nginx-WSL.

staging: develop and test changes here.
production: promote reviewed, tested commits here and tag stable releases.
master: original branch, preserved.

The production branch contains the public package code. Tag stable releases from production.

cd /var/www/html/date-validation
composer install
composer test
composer validate --strict

GitHub Actions is configured for Laravel 12 and 13. Composer installs package source directly; there is no separate build command.

References: Laravel custom rules and Carbon calendar arithmetic.

shakil3334413 / date-validation

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