Spring Bean Validation with Hibernate: validation not happening on update

Question

I have a class defined as follows:

import org.hibernate.validator.constraints.NotBlank;

public class Game {

    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    @Id
    @Column(name = "id")
    Long id;

    @NotBlank
    @Column(name = "title")
    String title;
    ...

However, when I execute the following test, no validation exception is thrown:

@Test(expected = ConstraintViolationException.class)
public void thatExistingGameGivenBlankTitleCannotBeSaved(){
    Game game = new Game("SimCity 2000");
    gameDAO.save(game);
    game.setTitle(" "); //game.setTitle(null) doesn't work either
    gameDAO.save(game);
}

How can I make the validator trigger when saving an already persisted object? Preferably through Java configuration.

My validation dependencies:

<!-- validation -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
    <artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
    <version>5.1.0.Final</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.el</groupId>
    <artifactId>javax.el-api</artifactId>
    <version>2.2.4</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.glassfish.web</groupId>
    <artifactId>javax.el</artifactId>
    <version>2.2.4</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
    <artifactId>hibernate-validator-cdi</artifactId>
    <version>5.1.0.Final</version>
</dependency>

Validations are generally (and should be) done on the command bean. — Tiny, Mar 07 '14 at 20:40
Thanks, could you please direct me to some documentation on how to do this? — Carlos Daniel Gadea Omelchenko, Mar 07 '14 at 20:42
[1](http://beanvalidation.org/1.0/spec/), [2](http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/3.0.0.RC3/reference/html/ch05s07.html), [3](http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/3.2.x/spring-framework-reference/html/validation.html) and [this](http://www.mkyong.com/spring-mvc/spring-3-mvc-and-jsr303-valid-example/) is a basic full-fledged example. — Tiny, Mar 07 '14 at 20:50
Answers to [this](http://stackoverflow.com/q/12146298/1391249) question say much about validations. — Tiny, Mar 07 '14 at 21:11
@SotiriosDelimanolis [Api](https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/validator/5.1/api/org/hibernate/validator/constraints/NotBlank.html) says: Validate that the annotated string is not null or empty. The difference to NotEmpty is that trailing whitespaces are getting ignored. — Markus Malkusch, Mar 08 '14 at 14:43
@CarlosDanielGadeaOmelchenko Your gameDAO.save() is calling hibernate ORM? — Markus Malkusch, Mar 08 '14 at 14:53
@Tiny There's nothing wrong in setting constraints on the domain model. — Markus Malkusch, Mar 08 '14 at 15:09
@MarkusMalkusch gameDAO extends JpaRespository. Spring creates a proxy of GameDAO that handles persistence via Hibernate. — Carlos Daniel Gadea Omelchenko, Mar 08 '14 at 20:24

Markus Malkusch · Answer 1 · 2014-03-08T15:14:03.713

Your JPA implementation has to integrate bean validation. If you're using Hibernate this will happen automatically by putting the validation provider in the class path. If not read 10.1.3. JPA. Given your tags I assume you're using JPA/Hibernate and it should work.

I don't know what gameDAO.save() is calling on your JPA implementation. Hibernate's integration is event based. If your save() is none of these events there will be no validation by default:

PreInsertEvent
PreUpdateEvent
PreDeleteEvent

Spring Bean Validation with Hibernate: validation not happening on update

1 Answers1