Laravel model's fillable against request validation rules

I have been using laravel for a couple of times and when I used laravel 4 before, I used to add the rules for validation as a static member of the model. Like this one:

class Foo extends ValidatableModel
{
    protected static $rules = [
        'bar' => 'required'
    ];
}

The ValidatableModel extends Laravel's base Model and then has custom method to fill the attributes. I have no fillable property.

Now, in Laravel 5, I am not using this because of the further decoupling of validation which is good. With the advent of Request where you can specify the rules, I am now using the fillable property but I just don't like the duplication where you specify the field in the fillable property and then add the same field in the specific Request object. Too much work when adding/removing database fields.

I am of the mindset that a fillable property is a property that needs to be validated. Correct me if I am wrong here but so far, that has been my experience.

I have something in mind but I still have to test if it will work. Basically, I have to create my own base Model where I would set the values of fillable from a Request class. Something like below:

class FooRequest
{
    public static $rules = [
        'bar' => 'required'
    ];
}

...

class FooModel extends ValidatableModel
{
    public $fillable = [];

    public static function boot()
    {
        parent::boot();

        static::creating(function($model) {

            $requestClass = 'come up based on naming convention';
            $rules = $requestClass::$$rules;

            $model->fillable = array_keys($rules);
        });
    }
}

I don't know if this will work. I was just thinking about it and maybe I'll try it when I get home. And it looks like a lot of work just to eliminate the duplication in fillable property.

What do you guys think?

via Chebli Mohamed