@Autowired bean null in ConstraintValidator when invoked by Sessionfactory.getCurrentSession.merge

Question

I have just implemented Bean Validation with Hibernate.

If I call the validator explicitly it works as expected and my @Autowired DAO bean that connects to the DB is injected as expected.

I had previously discovered that I needed to add the statement below before the above would work. I had made extensive use of @Autowired beans before but the statement below was necessary for the validator to be managed by Spring and the bean injected into the ConstraintValidator.

<bean id="validator"
class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean" />

However when the validator is called automatically during a SessionFactory.getCurrentSession.merge the bean is null.

The fact that it works if I invoke the validator directly with a call to javax.Validation.validate makes me think that I have set up the Spring configuration correctly.

I have read a number for posts where people have been unable to get the DAO bean @Autowired but in my case it is except when called during the merge.

The log output below shows the validator being called directly first and then being called as as a result of a merge operation.

07.12.2011 01:58:13  INFO [http-8080-1] (FileTypeAndClassValidator:isValid) - Validating ...
07.12.2011 01:58:13  INFO [http-8080-1] (ConstraintValidatorHelper:getPropertyValue) - propertyName=className, returnValue=com.twoh.dto.PurchaseOrder
07.12.2011 01:58:13  INFO [http-8080-1] (ConstraintValidatorHelper:getPropertyValue) - propertyName=fileTypeId, returnValue=4
07.12.2011 01:58:13  INFO [http-8080-1] (QueryUtil:createHQLQuery) - select ft.id from FileType ft where ft.id = :fileTypeId and ft.fileClassName = :fileClassName
07.12.2011 01:58:13  INFO [http-8080-1] (BaseDAO:merge) - Entity: com.twoh.dto.PurchaseOrder: 1036.
07.12.2011 01:58:13  INFO [http-8080-1] (FileTypeAndClassValidator:isValid) - Validating ...
07.12.2011 01:58:13  INFO [http-8080-1] (ConstraintValidatorHelper:getPropertyValue) - propertyName=className, returnValue=com.twoh.dto.PurchaseOrder
07.12.2011 01:58:13  INFO [http-8080-1] (ConstraintValidatorHelper:getPropertyValue) - propertyName=fileTypeId, returnValue=4
07.12.2011 01:58:13  INFO [http-8080-1] (FileTypeAndClassValidator:isValid) - java.lang.NullPointerException

Below is the code for the ConstraintValidator:

package com.twoh.dto.ConstraintValidation;

import javax.validation.ConstraintValidator;
import javax.validation.ConstraintValidatorContext;

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

import com.twoh.dao.IQueryUtil;

@Component
public class FileTypeAndClassValidator implements ConstraintValidator<FileTypeAndClass, Object> {

    private Log logger = LogFactory.getLog(this.getClass());

    private String fileClassProperty;
    private String fileTypeProperty;

    @Autowired
    private IQueryUtil queryUtil;

    public void initialize(FileTypeAndClass constraintAnnotation) {
        this.fileClassProperty = constraintAnnotation.fileClassProperty();
        this.fileTypeProperty = constraintAnnotation.fileTypeProperty();
    }

    public boolean isValid(Object object, ConstraintValidatorContext constraintValidatorContext) {
        boolean result = true;

        logger.info("Validating ...");

        if (object == null) {
            result = false;
        } else {
            try {
                String fileClassName =  ConstraintValidatorHelper.getPropertyValue(String.class, fileClassProperty, object);
                Integer fileTypeId =  ConstraintValidatorHelper.getPropertyValue(Integer.class, fileTypeProperty, object);

                result = queryUtil.createHQLQuery((
                        "select ft.id" +
                        " from FileType ft" +
                        " where ft.id = :fileTypeId" +
                        " and ft.fileClassName = :fileClassName"
                ))
                .setParameter("fileTypeId", fileTypeId)
                .setParameter("fileClassName", fileClassName)
                .iterate().hasNext();
            } catch (Exception e) {
                logger.info(e);
            }
        }
        return result;
    }
}

Answer 1

You can use the following method provided by Spring framework since 2.5.1

SpringBeanAutowiringSupport.processInjectionBasedOnCurrentContext(this);

it's much cleaner since you don't have to set any listener/property across your application.

You code will look like this:

public class ValidUniqueUserEmailValidator implements ConstraintValidator<ValidUniqueUserEmail, Object>, Serializable {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    @Autowired
    private UserDAO userDAO;

    @Override
    public void initialize(ValidUniqueUserEmail constraintAnnotation) {
        SpringBeanAutowiringSupport.processInjectionBasedOnCurrentContext(this);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean isValid(Object value, ConstraintValidatorContext context) {
        boolean isValid = true;
        if (value instanceof String) {
            String email = value.toString();
            if (email == null || email.equals("")) {
                isValid = false;
            }else{
                User user = new User();
                user.setEmail(email);
                isValid = (userDAO.countByEmail(user) > 0);
            }
        }
        return isValid;

    }

}

Hope it helps you guys out

Answer 2

Ok after about 18hrs of googling I finally came across a site that both described the problem it has a solution. Recipe: Using Hibernate event-based validation with custom JSR-303 validators and Spring autowired injection

In my current project, we wanted to build a custom validator that would check if an e-mail address already existed in the database before saving any instance of our Contact entity using Hibernate. This validator needed a DAO to be injected in order to check for the existence of the e-mail address in the database. To our surprise, what we thought would be a breeze was more of a gale. Spring’s injection did not work at all when our bean was validated in the context of Hibernate’s event-based validation (in our case, the pre-insert event).

In the end my spring configuration ended up looking like this:

...
<bean id="validator" class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean" />
<bean id="beanValidationEventListener" class="org.hibernate.cfg.beanvalidation.BeanValidationEventListener">
    <constructor-arg ref="validator"/>
    <constructor-arg ref="hibernateProperties"/>
</bean>

...

<util:properties id="hibernateProperties" location="classpath:hibernate.properties"/>

<bean id="sessionFactory"
    class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="myDataSource" />
    <property name="packagesToScan" value="com.twoh" />
    <property name="hibernateProperties" ref="hibernateProperties"/>
    <property name="eventListeners">
        <map>
            <entry key="pre-insert" value-ref="beanValidationEventListener" />
            <entry key="pre-update" value-ref="beanValidationEventListener" />
        </map>
    </property>
</bean>