Using Java EE 6 Bean Validation

Question

I am trying to use Java EE 6 Validation as specified here

http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/6/tutorial/doc/gircz.html

I have annotated a simple field

Answer 1

Your use of the annotations is just fine. There's a validator implementation for each of those rest assured.

However, at some point you need to trigger the validation of this POJO. If it were an @Entity it would be your JPA provider which triggers validation, in your case you need to do it yourself.

There's a nice documentation for Hibernate Validator which is the reference implementation for JSR-303.

Example

public class Car {
    @NotNull
    @Valid
    private List passengers = new ArrayList();
}

Using Car and validating:

Car car = new Car( null, true );

ValidatorFactory factory = Validation.buildDefaultValidatorFactory();
Validator validator = factory.getValidator();
Set> constraintViolations = validator.validate( car );

assertEquals( 1, constraintViolations.size() );
assertEquals( "may not be null", constraintViolations.iterator().next().getMessage() );

You may also want to read how bean validation is integrated with other frameworks (JPA, CDI, etc.).