title: How can I manually return or throw a validation error/exception in Laravel?
body: <p>Have a method that's importing CSV-data into a Database. I do some basic validation using </p>
  
  <pre><code>class CsvImportController extends Controller
  {
      public function import(Request $request)
      {   
          $this-&gt;validate($request, [
              'csv_file' =&gt; 'required|mimes:csv,txt',
          ]);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But after that things can go wrong for more complex reasons, further down the rabbit hole, that throws exceptions of some sort. I can't write proper validation stuff to use with the <code>validate</code> method here, but, I really like how Laravel works when the validation fails and how easy it is to embed the error(s) into the blade view etc, so...</p>
  
  <p>Is there a (preferably clean) way to <em>manually</em> tell Laravel that "I know I didn't use your <code>validate</code> method right now, but I'd really like you to expose this error here as if I did"? Is there something I can return, an exception I can wrap things with, or something?</p>
  
  <pre><code>try
  {
      // Call the rabbit hole of an import method
  }
  catch(\Exception $e)
  {
      // Can I return/throw something that to Laravel looks 
      // like a validation error and acts accordingly here?
  }
  </code></pre>