regex - Laravel pattern validation pipe character issue

Question

Using the Laravel framework I need to check the value of a submitted field against a set of valid values.

The problem is Laravel uses the | character to separate validation rules belonging to a field.

This does not work, it throws a

"preg_match: No ending delimiter '/' found":

'my_field' => 'match:/^(value1|value2|different value|yet another)$/'

How does one escapes the | character in this case if the character does not help?

Answer 1

The answer, essentially, is that you cannot use a pipe if you're specifying all the rules in one string like you're trying to do. The pull request that m.buettner mentioned was closed. However, Tayler Otwell mentioned an alternative method you can use: specify the rules in an array. An example of this would be:

$rules = array(
    'field' => array('size:5', 'match:/foo|bar/')
);