Spring – Using both JSR-303 and Traditional Bean Validation

bean-validationspringspring-mvc

Is it possible to use both JSR-303 bean validation and traditional validation (a single validator class for the type) in Spring? If so, what configuration is required to set this up?

I have tried the instructions on the reference.

@InitBinder
protected void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
    binder.setValidator(new DualEntryValidator());
}

@RequestMapping(value="/dualEntry.htm", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public ModelAndView handlePost(@Valid DualEntryForm form, BindingResult result) {
    ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView("dualEntry", getCommonModel());

    if (!result.hasErrors()){
        //do logic
        return modelAndView;

    }else {
        modelAndView.addObject("dualEntryForm", form);
        return modelAndView;
    }
}

I can get this to use my custom Validator or the JSR-303 validation, but not both. If I have the initBinder present as in the example it uses the custom Validator. If I remove it the JSR-303 bean validation is used. How can I use both?

Best Answer

I've done that following the instructions here:

http://blog.jteam.nl/2009/08/04/bean-validation-integrating-jsr-303-with-spring/

See the "Enjoy both worlds" section. Shortly, you explicitly run a JSR303 validation from a Spring validator, "joining" the results of JSR303 validations based on annotations and your custom validation logic.

Related Solutions

Javascript – JSR 303 Bean Validation + Javascript Client-Side Validation

I would suggest that you look at Spring JS, which relies heavily on Dojo. A tutorial can be found here.

Easiest way for yourself to start playing with it is to download Spring Roo, create the petclinic sample application with one of the example-scripts (this takes you 5 minutes) and then play around with how the javascript is integrated. Spring Roo creates an app with the same technology stack that you use (Spring+hibernate+implementation of jsr 303)

JSR-303 Bean Validation for enum fields

Since for some reasons enumerations are not supported this restriction could be simply handled by a simple String based Validator.

Validator:

/**
 * Validates a given object's String representation to match one of the provided
 * values.
 */
public class ValueValidator implements ConstraintValidator<Value, Object>
{
    /**
     * String array of possible enum values
     */
    private String[] values;

    @Override
    public void initialize(final Value constraintAnnotation)
    {
        this.values = constraintAnnotation.values();
    }

    @Override
    public boolean isValid(final Object value, final ConstraintValidatorContext context)
    {
        return ArrayUtils.contains(this.values, value == null ? null : value.toString());
    }
}

Interface:

@Target(value =
{
    ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE, ElementType.CONSTRUCTOR, ElementType.PARAMETER
})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Constraint(validatedBy =
{
    ValueValidator.class
})
@Documented
public @interface Value
{
    public String message() default "{package.Value.message}";

    Class<?>[] groups() default
    {};

    Class<? extends Payload>[] payload() default
    {};

    public String[] values() default
    {};
}

Validator uses apache commons library. An advanced coerce to type method would enhance the flexibility of this validator even further.

An alternative could use a single String attribute instead of an array and split by delimiter. This would also print values nicely for error-message since arrays are not being printed, but handling null values could be a problem using String.valueOf(...)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Javascript – JSR 303 Bean Validation + Javascript Client-Side Validation

JSR-303 Bean Validation for enum fields

Related Topic