Validation is observable now and 'manager' is not reserved anymore

• The word "manager" was found reserved and not available in models. (#120 by @MrNomNom)
• Added "validating" and "validated" observable events to the list of events from Eloquent (#153 by @unstoppablecarl)

Fixing hasSession from Laravel

• Fix of a bug caused by an (irresponsible?) update on Laravel. (#154 by @shrikantmeena, #156 by @plmarcelo and #164 by @codextends)
• Small fix in the readme by @pweston

validateUniques + global DB Capsule

• included a validateUniques(), just like we have updateUniques() (#140 by @mouhsinelonly)
• DB Capsule is now made global to be used with migrations and schema stuff (#138 by @PeterSchumacher)
• doc and code styling fixes (myself + @victor-ponamariov)

Fixing support for Laravel on 4.1+

Since 2.3.0 Ardent only supports Laravel 4.1 and above, and thus the composer file needed to be updated to reflect that.
If you need 4.0 support, go to 2.1.

Override Validator + final fix to updateUniques + 4.1 + more

• Improvements to work with Laravel 4.1 (#133 by @bexarcreative-daniel, #136 by @MrNomNom)
• Finally fixing the logic of updateUniques, that got broken because of a failed command-line merge (#114 by @andrew13)
• Ability to override makeValidator() to be able to customize the Validator object used (#122 by @claar)
• CSRF token is now purged in basicPurgeFilters() (#117 by @vanadium23)
• Doc fixes (#115 by @stAMy, #126 by @hisorange)

Improves to unique handling

Based on the awesome contributions of @nightowl77 and other developers in PR #86, this release introduces improvements to the handling of rules for unique fields.

This release also ships with a small bugfix by @vasayxtx (#97) and @borfast (#103).

Improved hydration

• Using Eloquent::fill() to hydrate model instead of relying on validation rules. Read f400245
• Documentation upgrades

New hooks, exceptions and relationsData array

• addition of before/afterSave, Update, Delete and Validate hooks, that are called by the model when the given events happen, with no arguments (changed from the RC)
• addition of Ardent::throwOnFind boolean property to forcefully throw exceptions when models are not found (forcing usage of findOrFail)
• addition of InvalidModelException, enabled by Ardent::throwOnValidate
• addition of Ardent::relationsData static attribute that makes it much easier to define relations, cleaning the clutter in models with many relationships
• cleaner code, following code style rules (almost PSR-2, except for braces)

Out of Laravel

Enables Ardent to be used outside of the main Laravel framework. Use Ardent::configureAsExternal() with the connection array as argument for that.

New hooks, exceptions and relationsData array

• addition of before/afterSave, Update, Delete, Validate hooks, that are called statically with the model being received as only argument
• addition of Ardent::throwOnFind boolean property to forcefully throw exceptions when models are not found (forcing usage of findOrFail)
• addition of InvalidModelException, enabled by Ardent::throwOnValidate
• addition of Ardent::relationsData static attribute that makes it much easier to define relations, cleaning the clutter in models with many relationships
• cleaner code, following code style rules (almost PSR-2, except for braces)