Validate superclass property in subclass (XML)

sjoe · **Joined:** Mon May 10, 2010 3:50 am **Posts:** 3

Hi,

There have been already quite some topics about this, except how to use this in XML. (Please don't start the why XML discussion here :-) )

Code:

<bean class="com.SubObject">
   <field name="superField">
       <constraint annotation="org.hibernate.validator.constraints.NotBlank">
           <message>Should not be empty</message>
           <groups>
               <value>com.SomeGroup</value>
           </groups>
       </constraint>
    </field>
</bean>

Code:

public class SubObject extends SuperObject{

     public SubObject() {
         super();
     }

     private String someSubField;

     .. getters setters etc
}

public class SuperObject {

     public SuperObject() {
         super();
     }

     private String superField;

     .. getters setters etc
}

Now the error:

javax.validation.ValidationException: com.SubObject does not contain the fieldType superField

Gunnar · **Joined:** Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:46 pm **Posts:** 388

Since the type "SubObject" doesn't contain a field "superField" you can't add a constraint to it. Instead you could override the getter for the field in the sub-class and add the constraint to that getter via XML.

sjoe · **Joined:** Mon May 10, 2010 3:50 am **Posts:** 3

Gunnar wrote:

Since the type "SubObject" doesn't contain a field "superField" you can't add a constraint to it. Instead you could override the getter for the field in the sub-class and add the constraint to that getter via XML.

That doesn't work, via reflection it's actually looking for the class attribute instead of using the getters and setters.