How to validate a file but not actually import it?

[msslgomez]

I'm making an excel validator for data for system B on system A, system A depends on the information from system B however system B is more internal and private and so that's why I'm doing it this way since most people only have access to system A. Now I DO NOT want to save the file contents in system A at all, it wouldn't work anyway since the table structures are different. I only want to validate and return an array of errors or a success message.

I have this code however I feel like this is going to import the file if it passes validation which I don't want. I tried to change Excel::import to Excel::toArray or Excel::toCollection but that doesn't work as the file never validates this way and always return success true.

    public function validateData(Request $request)
    {
        try {
            Excel::import(new SalePointValidate, $request->file('excel'));

            return response()->json(['success' => true]);
        } catch (\Maatwebsite\Excel\Validators\ValidationException $e) {
            $failures = $e->failures();
            $errors = [];

            foreach ($failures as $failure) {
                $errors[] = [
                    'row' => $failure->row(), // row that went wrong
                    'attribute' => $failure->attribute(), // either heading key (if using heading row concern) or column index
                    'errors' => $failure->errors(), // Actual error messages from Laravel validator
                    'values' => $failure->values() // The values of the row that has failed.
                ];
            }

            return response()->json(['success' => false, 'errors' => $errors], 200);
        } catch (\Exception $e) {
            Log::error($e);

            return response()->json(['success' => false], 500);
        }
    }

[krsriq]

Maybe you could add the Interface ToCollection (or ToArray) to your Import class and just leave the collection(Collection $collection) (or array(array $array)) method empty? This means that you would still have to use Excel::import (without actually importing anything).
See https://docs.laravel-excel.com/3.1/imports/collection.html

[msslgomez]

Yes, you're right I did do that but with the toModel I'm not sure if there is a difference. However, the new issue is getting all the errors at once. Right now, it stops after every error and that would make it super annoying to actually validate a file because after you validate you would have to fix whatever line is wrong, save the file and validate it again, and go like that. If the file has 100 linea that would take forever. Is there anyway for me to get all or some at least of the validation errors instead of one by one?