Custom Bean Validation never executed

[Markus Schmider]

Hello I am trying to test a Java Bean Validation custom constraint with JPA
I am using Wildfly 8.2

@Constraint(validatedBy = AdressValidator.class)
@Target({ ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE })
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface ValidAddress {
	String message() default "muss komplett gefüllt oder leer sein";

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

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

public class AdressValidator implements ConstraintValidator<ValidAddress, Adress> {

	@Override
	public void initialize(ValidAddress arg0) {

	}
	
	@Override
	public boolean isValid(Adress adresse, ConstraintValidatorContext validationContext) {
		if (adresse == null)
			return true;
		if (adresse.getTown() == null && adresse.getZip() == null && adresse.getStreet() == null)
			return true;
		if (adresse.getTown() != null && adresse.getZip() != null && adresse.getStreet() != null)
			return true;
		return false;
	}

}

@Embeddable
@ValidAddress
public class Adress {
	

	private String street;
	private String town;
	private String zip;
	

@Entity
@NamedQueries({ @NamedQuery(name = "Employee.findAll", query = "SELECT e FROM Employee e") })
public class Employee extends GeneratedLongIdEntity {

	public final static String FIND_ALL = "Employee.findAll";

	
	@NotNull
	@Size(min=2, max=50)
	private String firstName;
	@NotNull
	@Size(min=2, max=50)
	private String lastName;

	@ValidAddress
	private Adress adress;

	@Test
	public void transientValidation() {
		Adress adress = new Adress(null, "Frankfurt", null);
		Employee employee = new Employee();
		employee.setFirstName("Marcus");
		employee.setLastName("Didius");
		employee.setAdress(adress);
		try {
			employeDAO.persist(employee);
		} catch (Exception e) {
			assertTrue(ExceptionUtil.isConstraintViolationException(e));
		}
		assertEquals(0, employeDAO.findAll().size());
	}

The AdressValidator.isValid method is never being called. What's wrong???

[Roel De Nijs]

Markus Schmider wrote:The AdressValidator.isValid method is never being called. What's wrong???

Your code example seems very similar with this article. The only difference is that the article uses a custom constraint validator on an entity and yours example uses an embeddable. Could you try adding the @Valid annotation where you are using your custom @ValidAdress annotation. That might trigger your validation provider to validate the adress which will then call your @ValidAdress validator. So the code would look like

@Valid
@ValidAddress
private Adress adress;

Another (unrelated) note: why are you not using the FIND_ALL constant when defining the named query?

@NamedQuery(name = Employee.FIND_ALL, query = "SELECT e FROM Employee e")

Hope it helps!
Kind regards,
Roel

[Markus Schmider]

Thanks for your reply.
Adding the Valid Annotation has not solved the problem (although it seems logical to add it ...)

[Roel De Nijs]

Markus Schmider wrote:Adding the Valid Annotation has not solved the problem (although it seems logical to add it ...)

Honestly I expected that would do the trick, but it didn't. So I'm a bit clueless, so that means guessing and trial & error will be next

Which version of JPA/Hibernate are you using? I assume that regular bean validation does work (e.g. @Size(min=2, max=50)). It would be nice if you could create a small custom bean validation, apply it to the entity itself (instead of with an embeddable) and see if that works. If it does, we can assume it's embeddable related. If it doesn't, we can assume it's related to custom bean validation in general.

[Moises Villa]

It is sad to notice that documentation frameworks are not well documented. The solution to this issue is to have the right Target, in the case of the https://beanvalidation.org/2.0/spec/#constraintsdefinitionimplementation-constraintdefinition at the Class Level use "TYPE_USE for container element constraints"
for instance:
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target(ElementType.TYPE_USE)
@Documented
public @interface ExtractedValue {