Lazy Validation

If you want your DTO to have validation, but not to validate while creating the DTO, you can set your ValidatedDTO to use the Lazy Validation feature.

class LazyDTO extends ValidatedDTO
{
    public bool $lazyValidation = true;
}

When you set the $lazyValidation as true, you can instantiate your DTO without setting any attributes. When setting attributes on your DTO, it won't cast them automatically, the attributes will be cast only when you validate the DTO data by calling the validate() method.

$dto = new LazyDTO();
$dto->name = 'John Doe';
$dto->validate(); // This is where the data is validated and the attributes are cast

If the validation passes, the attributes will be cast in the DTO object.

If the validation fails, it will throw a Illuminate\Validation\ValidationException.

This is a useful feature when using ValidatedDTOs with Livewire.

use Livewire\Wireable as LivewireWireable;
use WendellAdriel\ValidatedDTO\Concerns\Wireable;

class MyDTO extends ValidatedDTO implements LivewireWireable
{
    use Wireable;
    
    public bool $lazyValidation = true;
}

The Lazy attribute

As an alternative, instead of setting the $lazyValidation as true in your DTO class, you can add the Lazy attribute to it, it will work the same way as described above.

#[Lazy]
class UserDTO extends ValidatedDTO
{
    // DTO definition here
}