title: Laravel sometimes and require rule unexpected behaviour
body: <p>I working on Laravel application. In <code>UserRequest</code> I am validating the input. The following rule:</p>
  
  <pre><code>'name' =&gt; 'sometimes|required|string|min:2|max:50'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>fails if user name is not present although there is <code>sometimes</code> keyword present. The following request works fine though:</p>
  
  <pre><code>'name' =&gt; 'sometimes|string|min:2|max:50'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am not the first one to experience this problem (see <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34393134/laravel-validation-required-rule-not-working">Laravel validation required rule not working</a>).</p>
  
  <p>However, documentation says that I should use the first option:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>In some situations, you may wish to run validation checks against a field only if that field is present in the input array. To quickly accomplish this, add the sometimes rule to your rule list:</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <pre><code>$v = Validator::make($data, [
      'email' =&gt; 'sometimes|required|email',
  ]);
  </code></pre>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>In the example above, the email field will only be validated if it is present in the $data array.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>(<a href="https://laravel.com/docs/5.1/validation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://laravel.com/docs/5.1/validation</a>)</p>
  
  <p>Does some know if that something I am doing wrong or a bug that needs to be reported?</p>