Proposal: multiple beanvalidators of the same type

evdelst · **Joined:** Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:49 am **Posts:** 63

I have a suggestion for the following problem:
I created an Validator to check if a 'date'> 'another date'

The annotation looks like this:
@After(property="endDate", after="beginDate", message="End should be after begin")

Since it involves 2 properties, it is a class-level validation.

Now....
I want multiple 'after' validations on a single bean.
But that is not possible (you can only place an annotation once on a class).

My proposal is to add an annotation 'Validations':

@Validations( {@After(...), @After(..)} )

I could do the multiple validations in a single validatorclass, but I want all the messages added to the invalidValues array, not a single message.

This change would also require changes in the ClassValidator class.

What do you think of this proposal? Should I add it to Jira (I can propably implement it if there are no objections to the required changes)

Edwin van der Elst
Finalist IT Group

emmanuel · **Posted:** Wed Dec 20, 2006 7:52 pm

Open a JIRA issue, it makes sense

evdelst · **Joined:** Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:49 am **Posts:** 63

http://opensource.atlassian.com/project ... se/ANN-513

emmanuel · **Posted:** Thu Dec 21, 2006 4:02 pm

Hi Edwin,
If you come up with a patch (+ test), I'll include it with 3.2.2 :-)

evdelst · **Joined:** Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:49 am **Posts:** 63

I will submit the patch end of next week (it'll have to wait untill after Christmas:-)

emmanuel · **Posted:** Wed Dec 27, 2006 10:59 am

fantastic :-)

awhitford · **Joined:** Thu Dec 28, 2006 5:24 pm **Posts:** 14

I have this exact problem, but I think of it a little differently; I see the problem of providing semantic object validation. It is one thing to validate individual fields, but it is yet another to validate the object as a whole.

See my post in the JBoss Seam forum on Object Validation.

Can validators be used to annotate at the class level?

evdelst · **Joined:** Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:49 am **Posts:** 63

I'm afraid it isn't going to work...
Let me explain:

I want to define a list of 'validations' on the classlevel.
But, an annotation can only have an array of another concrete annotation-type. (This is a language limitation, you cannot extend annotations and use the 'super' class for the collection of validations)

Example, I can create a 'validations' annotation like this:

Code:

public @interface Validations {
   Required [] validations();
}

This means, I can only add 'required' validations to the list, not other types of validations.

This is not possible:

Code:

public @interface Validations {
   Validation[] validations();
}
...
usage:
@Validations ( validations = {@Required(prop="startDate",message="Start date is required"), @After(prop="endDate",other="BeginDate",message="bla"} )

Now, I'm toying with the idea of allowing a classvalidator to return an array of InvalidValue objects.
This is however very different from the current way the validations work (=specify the messagekey in an annotation).

Don't know if this will be an accepted approach.

Edwin

emmanuel · **Posted:** Thu Jan 04, 2007 7:56 am

evdelst wrote:

Now, I'm toying with the idea of allowing a classvalidator to return an array of InvalidValue objects.
This is however very different from the current way the validations work (=specify the messagekey in an annotation).

Don't know if this will be an accepted approach.

Edwin

I don't understand.

emmanuel · **Posted:** Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:00 am

awhitford wrote:

Can validators be used to annotate at the class level?

yes

Code:

@MyValidator
public class MyEntity { ... }

emmanuel · **Posted:** Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:16 am

Edwin, see my comment on the JIRA issue. There might have a workaround

evdelst · **Joined:** Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:49 am **Posts:** 63

I attached the patch to the JIRA issue

Edwin

emmanuel · **Posted:** Mon Jan 08, 2007 1:33 pm

thanks!