WAAVI Sanitizer

About WAAVI

WAAVI is a Spanish web development and product consulting agency, working with Startups and other online businesses since 2013. Need to get work done in Laravel or PHP? Contact us through waavi.com.

Introduction

WAAVI Sanitizer provides an easy way to format user input, both through the provided filters or through custom ones that can easily be added to the sanitizer library.

Although not limited to Laravel 5 users, there are some extensions provided for this framework, like a way to easily Sanitize user input through a custom FormRequest and easier extensibility.

Example

Given a data array with the following format:

    $data = [
        'first_name'    =>  'john',
        'last_name'     =>  '<strong>DOE</strong>',
        'email'         =>  '  [email protected]',
        'birthdate'     =>  '06/25/1980',
        'jsonVar'       =>  '{"name":"value"}',
        'description'   =>  '<p>Test paragraph.</p><!-- Comment --> <a href="#fragment">Other text</a>',
        'phone'         =>  '+08(096)90-123-45q',
        'country'       =>  'GB',
        'postcode'      =>  'ab12 3de',
    ];

We can easily format it using our Sanitizer and the some of Sanitizer's default filters:

    use \Waavi\Sanitizer\Sanitizer;

    $filters = [
        'first_name'    =>  'trim|escape|capitalize',
        'last_name'     =>  'trim|escape|capitalize',
        'email'         =>  'trim|escape|lowercase',
        'birthdate'     =>  'trim|format_date:m/d/Y, Y-m-d',
        'jsonVar'       =>  'cast:array',
        'description'   =>  'strip_tags',
        'phone'         =>  'digit',
        'country'       =>  'trim|escape|capitalize',
        'postcode'      =>  'trim|escape|uppercase|filter_if:country,GB',
    ];

    $sanitizer  = new Sanitizer($data, $filters);
    var_dump($sanitizer->sanitize());

Which will yield:

    [
        'first_name'    =>  'John',
        'last_name'     =>  'Doe',
        'email'         =>  '[email protected]',
        'birthdate'     =>  '1980-06-25',
        'jsonVar'       =>  '["name" => "value"]',
        'description'   =>  'Test paragraph. Other text',
        'phone'         =>  '080969012345',
        'country'       =>  'GB',
        'postcode'      =>  'AB12 3DE',
    ];

It's usage is very similar to Laravel's Validator module, for those who are already familiar with it, although Laravel is not required to use this library.

Filters are applied in the same order they're defined in the $filters array. For each attribute, filters are separered by | and options are specified by suffixing a comma separated list of arguments (see format_date).

Available filters

The following filters are available out of the box:

Filter	Description
trim	Trims a string
escape	Escapes HTML and special chars using php's filter_var
lowercase	Converts the given string to all lowercase
uppercase	Converts the given string to all uppercase
capitalize	Capitalize a string
cast	Casts a variable into the given type. Options are: integer, float, string, boolean, object, array and Laravel Collection.
format_date	Always takes two arguments, the date's given format and the target format, following DateTime notation.
strip_tags	Strip HTML and PHP tags using php's strip_tags
digit	Get only digit characters from the string
filter_if	Applies filters if an attribute exactly matches value

Adding custom filters

You can add your own filters by passing a custom filter array to the Sanitize constructor as the third parameter. For each filter name, either a closure or a full classpath to a Class implementing the Waavi\Sanitizer\Contracts\Filter interface must be provided. Closures must always accept two parameters: $value and an $options array:

    class RemoveStringsFilter implements Waavi\Sanitizer\Contracts\Filter
    {
        public function apply($value, $options = [])
        {
            return str_replace($options, '', $value);
        }
    }

    $customFilters = [
        'hash'   =>  function($value, $options = []) {
                return sha1($value);
            },
        'remove_strings' => RemoveStringsFilter::class,
    ];

    $filters = [
        'secret'    =>  'hash',
        'text'      =>  'remove_strings:Curse,Words,Galore',
    ];

    $sanitize = new Sanitize($data, $filters, $customFilters);

Install

To install, just run:

composer require waavi/sanitizer ~1.0

And you're done! If you're using Laravel, in order to be able to access some extra functionality you must register both the Service provider in the providers array in config/app.php, as well as the Sanitizer Facade:

    'providers' => [
        ...
        Waavi\Sanitizer\Laravel\SanitizerServiceProvider::class,
    ];

    'aliases' => [
        ...
        'Sanitizer' => Waavi\Sanitizer\Laravel\Facade::class,
    ];

Laravel goodies

If you are using Laravel, you can use the Sanitizer through the Facade:

    $newData = \Sanitizer::make($data, $filters)->sanitize();

You can also easily extend the Sanitizer library by adding your own custom filters, just like you would the Validator library in Laravel, by calling extend from a ServiceProvider like so:

    \Sanitizer::extend($filterName, $closureOrClassPath);

You may also Sanitize input in your own FormRequests by using the SanitizesInput trait, and adding a filters method that returns the filters that you want applied to the input.

    namespace App\Http\Requests;

    use App\Http\Requests\Request;
    use Waavi\Sanitizer\Laravel\SanitizesInput;

    class SanitizedRequest extends Request
    {
        use SanitizesInput;

        public function filters()
        {
            return [
                'name'  => 'trim|capitalize',
                'email' => 'trim',
            ];
        }

        /* ... */

To generate a Sanitized Request just execute the included Artisan command:

php artisan make:sanitized-request TestSanitizedRequest

The only difference with a Laravel FormRequest is that now you'll have an extra 'fields' method in which to enter the input filters you wish to apply, and that input will be sanitized before being validated.

License

WAAVI Sanitizer is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license