Why you should never use the date validation rule without the data_format rule in Laravel

Hellow fellow Artisan,

The date validation rule in Laravel checks that a field is a valid date. However, it does not specify the format of the date. This can lead to errors if the user enters the date in a different format than expected.

Example if user enter incorrect date like this 20000-02-20 where instead of four digits(2000) for year five digit(200000) set , this will cause your application to break with this error below.

To avoid your application from break , you should avoid using only date rule like
'item.date_of_birth' => 'required|date|before:' .today()->subYears(7)->format('Y-m-d')
but you must use it with date_format() rule like this

'item.date_of_birth' => 'required|date|date_format:Y-m-d|before:' .today()->subYears(7)->format('Y-m-d')
so that instead of your application to break, user will get the validation error.

Happy Coding !

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