I recently wanted to test a controller POST in Tinker, so I needed to create the Request Object to pass into the POST controller.  I couldn’t find a decent answer on Google, so here’s my solution:

First, I created the formRequest class which was the bit that I wanted to test in Tinker.  The Form Request class handles all the validation and subsequent saves.  My model has dependant children, so it’s not always just a simple $post->update(validated attributes). 

php

namespace App\Http\Requests;

use App\Models\Task;
use Carbon\Carbon;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator;

class TaskRequest extends FormRequest
{
private $_validator;
private $_task;
/**
 * Determine if the user is authorized to make this request.
 *
 * @return bool
 */
// public function authorize()
// {
//     return false;
// }

/**
 * Get the validation rules that apply to the request.
 *
 * @return array
 */
public function rules()
{
    return [
        'task_name' => ['required', 'max:100'],
        'task_description' => ['nullable', 'max:1024'],
        'due_date' => ['nullable', 'max:50','after:today'],
        // ... and more
    ];
}

public function validator() 
{
    return $this->_validator ?? $this->_validator = Validator::make($this->sanitize(), $this->rules());
}

/**
* Convert any of your incoming variables, such as dates to required format
**/
public function sanitize()
{
    // get request vars
    $vars = $this->all();
    if ( !empty($vars['due_date']) )
    {
        $date = new Carbon($vars['due_date'] );
        $vars['due_date'] = $date->toDateTimeString();
    }
    return $vars;
}


public function save()
{
    if ( $this->validator()->fails() )
        return false;

    return $this->_task = Task::create(
       $this->validator()->validated()
    );
}

And then in Tinker you can create this class and then user the merge method to add your post variables as follows:

 $form = new App\Http\Requests\TaskRequest();
 $form->merge(['task_name'=>'test task','due_date'=>'2022-04-22Z15:45:13UTC']);
 $form->validator()->validated(); 


=> [
 "task_name" => "test task",
 "due_date" => "2022-04-22 15:45:13"
] 

And that’s it!