spring validation annotations being ignored when using custom validator

Question

I am trying to incorporate annotated validation rules along with some custom validation. I have a details entity which looks like the following:

public class DetailsEntity {    
    @NotEmpty(message = "Name is required")
    private String name;
    private String customField;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getCustomField() {
        return customField;
    }

    public void setCustomField(String customField) {
        this.customField = customField;
    }
}

I then have a controller that looks like this:

@Controller
public class EntityController {

    @RequestMapping(value = "/create", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public @ResponseBody DetailsEntity create(@RequestBody @Valid
        DetailsEntity details) {
        //Do some creation work
    }
}

This all works great out of the box. The problem is when I try to use a custom validator along with my entity. My validator looks like this:

@Component
public class EntityValidator implements Validator {

    @Override
    public boolean supports(Class<?> aClass) {
        return aClass.isAssignableFrom(DetailsEntity.class);
    }

    @Override
    public void validate(Object o, Errors errors) {
        DetailsEntity entity = (DetailsEntity) o;
        if (entity.getCustomField().equals("Some bad value")) {
            errors.reject("Bad custom value supplied");
        }
    }
}

I've tried injecting my validator two ways. One is using the @InitBinder in the controller, and the other is setting a global validator in the spring configuration (<mvc:annotation-driven validator="entityValidator" />). Either way I do it, the custom validator works fine, but my @NotEmpty annotation gets ignored. How can I use both the annotations as well as a custom validator?

Jose Luis Martin · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-11 17:56:06Z

2

Use SpringValidatorAdapter as base class of your custom validator and override validate() method:

public void validate(Object target, Errors errors) {
                // check JSR-303 Constraints
        super.validate(target, errors);
                // Add you custom validation here.

    }

Or inject a LocalValidationFactoryBean in you custom validator and call to validate(target, errors) before or after your custom validation.

edited Feb 11, 2013 at 17:56

answered Feb 11, 2013 at 17:44

Jose Luis Martin

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2 Comments

Ryan Caskey Over a year ago

That send me down the right path, ended up looking at this page: nonrepeatable.blogspot.com/2010/04/…

jarandaf Over a year ago

I would add that if one want to use group validations, the groups must be added in the the validate method. Otherwise those validations are not executed!

kartheek · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-12 05:23:16Z

1

@NotEmpty is a JSR-303 annotation, and we need to use an implementation of it like HiberanteValidator, we need to add Hibernate-Validator jar to your lib directory. Using this jar we can use @NotEmpty, @NotNull...all JSR 303 annotations.

answered Feb 12, 2013 at 5:23

kartheek

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1 Comment

BitfulByte Over a year ago

I came here because I expected Spring to reject my invalid request but it didn't. Fixed by simply adding org.hibernate.validator:hibernate-validator dependency. This answer is superior to the accepted answer because it utilizes spring built-in functionality instead of doing the hard work yourself.

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