When working with Laravel's validation system, it's important to understand the difference between the present and required rules. While they might seem similar at first glance, they serve distinct purposes.

required

The required rule ensures that a field exists in the request and is not empty. It’s one of the most common validation rules and is typically used to enforce that users provide a value.

$request->validate([
    'email' => 'required|email',
]);

In this example, if the email key is missing or its value is empty (e.g., null, empty string), validation will fail.

present

The present rule only checks that the field exists in the input, regardless of its value. It does not require the field to have a non-empty value.

$request->validate([
    'token' => 'present',
]);

This is useful when you expect a key to be present — such as a checkbox that may submit a falsy value (0, false, or an empty string) — but don’t want to enforce that it has a value.

Example

Imagine a form with a checkbox named subscribe:

• If you use required, the checkbox must be checked.
• If you use present, the checkbox input must be sent, but its value can be anything (even unchecked).

Summary

Rule	Requires key to be present?	Requires value to be non-empty?
present	✅ Yes	❌ No
required	✅ Yes	✅ Yes

Choose present when you care about the existence of a field, and required when you also need a value.