example of manual validation and throwing its exception in laravel 5.

l5-validator.php

<?php
/**
 * It is manual because L5 base controller uses `ValidatesRequests` trait
 * which helps a lot so that we only need to code `$this->validate($request, $rules, $messages)`
 * from our controller (which extends L5 controller). see: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/validation.
 */
public function store(Request $request){
  // make the validator.
  // $rules & $messages are associative array.
  // see: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/validation#manually-creating-validators
  $validator = Validator:: make($request->all(), $rules, $messages);
  
  // throw exception if fails (will throw HttpResponseException)
  if ($validator->fails())
    $this->throwValidationException( $request, $validator );
}