Verja

Verja (Old Norse: defender) is a PHP validation library for external input — forms, JSON bodies, query parameters, and any other data you don't control.

Core concept: Filter → Validate

Most validation libraries only check constraints. Verja makes two explicit steps out of it:

1. Filters transform raw input into the right type — trim whitespace, cast strings to integers, convert "true" to true.
2. Validators check constraints on the already-filtered value.

This means a validator never has to handle both "42" and 42. It always sees clean data.

// Raw input: ["age" => "  42  "]
// Integer filter: "  42  " → trim → "42" → cast → 42
// Between validator: checks 42 is within 0–150

$gate = (new Verja\Gate())
    ->int('age', 'between:0:150');

$result = $gate->validate($_POST);
// $result->data['age'] === 42  (int, not string)

Gate hierarchy

Verja provides three gate types that map to real data shapes:

Type	Use case
Gate	Structured data — objects and arrays with named keys
PropertyGate	A single scalar value
ArrayGate	A list where every element follows the same rules

Gates compose: Gate::object() accepts a nested Gate, Gate::array() wraps an ArrayGate. Errors from nested structures are automatically flattened to dot-notation paths (author.email, tags.1) in $result->errorMap.

Installation

composer require tflori/verja

Requires PHP 8.2 or later.

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Upgrading from v1? See the migration guide.