[java] Spring MVC: How to perform validation?

I would like to know what is the cleanest and best way to perform form validation of user inputs. I have seen some developers implement org.springframework.validation.Validator. A question about that: I saw it validates a class. Does the class have to be filled manually with the values from the user input, and then passed to the validator?

I am confused about the cleanest and best way to validate the user input. I know about the traditional method of using request.getParameter() and then manually checking for nulls, but I don't want to do all the validation in my Controller. Some good advice on this area will be greatly appreciated. I am not using Hibernate in this application.

I would like to extend nice answer of Jerome Dalbert. I found very easy to write your own annotation validators in JSR-303 way. You are not limited to have "one field" validation. You can create your own annotation on type level and have complex validation (see examples below). I prefer this way because I don't need mix different types of validation (Spring and JSR-303) like Jerome do. Also this validators are "Spring aware" so you can use @Inject/@Autowire out of box.

Example of custom object validation:

@Target({ TYPE, ANNOTATION_TYPE })
@Retention(RUNTIME)
@Constraint(validatedBy = { YourCustomObjectValidator.class })
public @interface YourCustomObjectValid {

    String message() default "{YourCustomObjectValid.message}";

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

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

public class YourCustomObjectValidator implements ConstraintValidator<YourCustomObjectValid, YourCustomObject> {

    @Override
    public void initialize(YourCustomObjectValid constraintAnnotation) { }

    @Override
    public boolean isValid(YourCustomObject value, ConstraintValidatorContext context) {

        // Validate your complex logic 

        // Mark field with error
        ConstraintViolationBuilder cvb = context.buildConstraintViolationWithTemplate(context.getDefaultConstraintMessageTemplate());
        cvb.addNode(someField).addConstraintViolation();

        return true;
    }
}

@YourCustomObjectValid
public YourCustomObject {
}

Example of generic fields equality:

import static java.lang.annotation.ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE;
import static java.lang.annotation.ElementType.TYPE;
import static java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME;

import java.lang.annotation.Documented;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;

import javax.validation.Constraint;
import javax.validation.Payload;

@Target({ TYPE, ANNOTATION_TYPE })
@Retention(RUNTIME)
@Constraint(validatedBy = { FieldsEqualityValidator.class })
public @interface FieldsEquality {

    String message() default "{FieldsEquality.message}";

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

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

    /**
     * Name of the first field that will be compared.
     * 
     * @return name
     */
    String firstFieldName();

    /**
     * Name of the second field that will be compared.
     * 
     * @return name
     */
    String secondFieldName();

    @Target({ TYPE, ANNOTATION_TYPE })
    @Retention(RUNTIME)
    public @interface List {
        FieldsEquality[] value();
    }
}




import java.lang.reflect.Field;

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

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import org.springframework.util.ReflectionUtils;

public class FieldsEqualityValidator implements ConstraintValidator<FieldsEquality, Object> {

    private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(FieldsEqualityValidator.class);

    private String firstFieldName;
    private String secondFieldName;

    @Override
    public void initialize(FieldsEquality constraintAnnotation) {
        firstFieldName = constraintAnnotation.firstFieldName();
        secondFieldName = constraintAnnotation.secondFieldName();
    }

    @Override
    public boolean isValid(Object value, ConstraintValidatorContext context) {
        if (value == null)
            return true;

        try {
            Class<?> clazz = value.getClass();

            Field firstField = ReflectionUtils.findField(clazz, firstFieldName);
            firstField.setAccessible(true);
            Object first = firstField.get(value);

            Field secondField = ReflectionUtils.findField(clazz, secondFieldName);
            secondField.setAccessible(true);
            Object second = secondField.get(value);

            if (first != null && second != null && !first.equals(second)) {
                    ConstraintViolationBuilder cvb = context.buildConstraintViolationWithTemplate(context.getDefaultConstraintMessageTemplate());
          cvb.addNode(firstFieldName).addConstraintViolation();

          ConstraintViolationBuilder cvb = context.buildConstraintViolationWithTemplate(context.getDefaultConstraintMessageTemplate());
          cvb.addNode(someField).addConstraintViolation(secondFieldName);

                return false;
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            log.error("Cannot validate fileds equality in '" + value + "'!", e);
            return false;
        }

        return true;
    }
}

@FieldsEquality(firstFieldName = "password", secondFieldName = "confirmPassword")
public class NewUserForm {

    private String password;

    private String confirmPassword;

}

Put this bean in your configuration class.

 @Bean
  public Validator localValidatorFactoryBean() {
    return new LocalValidatorFactoryBean();
  }

and then You can use

 <T> BindingResult validate(T t) {
    DataBinder binder = new DataBinder(t);
    binder.setValidator(validator);
    binder.validate();
    return binder.getBindingResult();
}

for validating a bean manually. Then You will get all result in BindingResult and you can retrieve from there.

If you have same error handling logic for different method handlers, then you would end up with lots of handlers with following code pattern:

if (validation.hasErrors()) {
  // do error handling
}
else {
  // do the actual business logic
}

Suppose you're creating RESTful services and want to return 400 Bad Request along with error messages for every validation error case. Then, the error handling part would be same for every single REST endpoint that requires validation. Repeating that very same logic in every single handler is not so DRYish!

One way to solve this problem is to drop the immediate BindingResult after each To-Be-Validated bean. Now, your handler would be like this:

@RequestMapping(...)
public Something doStuff(@Valid Somebean bean) { 
    // do the actual business logic
    // Just the else part!
}

This way, if the bound bean was not valid, a MethodArgumentNotValidException will be thrown by Spring. You can define a ControllerAdvice that handles this exception with that same error handling logic:

@ControllerAdvice
public class ErrorHandlingControllerAdvice {
    @ExceptionHandler(MethodArgumentNotValidException.class)
    public SomeErrorBean handleValidationError(MethodArgumentNotValidException ex) {
        // do error handling
        // Just the if part!
    }
}

You still can examine the underlying BindingResult using getBindingResult method of MethodArgumentNotValidException.

There are two ways to validate user input: annotations and by inheriting Spring's Validator class. For simple cases, the annotations are nice. If you need complex validations (like cross-field validation, eg. "verify email address" field), or if your model is validated in multiple places in your application with different rules, or if you don't have the ability to modify your model object by placing annotations on it, Spring's inheritance-based Validator is the way to go. I'll show examples of both.

The actual validation part is the same regardless of which type of validation you're using:

RequestMapping(value="fooPage", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String processSubmit(@Valid @ModelAttribute("foo") Foo foo, BindingResult result, ModelMap m) {
    if(result.hasErrors()) {
        return "fooPage";
    }
    ...
    return "successPage";
}

If you are using annotations, your Foo class might look like:

public class Foo {

    @NotNull
    @Size(min = 1, max = 20)
    private String name;

    @NotNull
    @Min(1)
    @Max(110)
    private Integer age;

    // getters, setters
}

Annotations above are javax.validation.constraints annotations. You can also use Hibernate's org.hibernate.validator.constraints, but it doesn't look like you are using Hibernate.

Alternatively, if you implement Spring's Validator, you would create a class as follows:

public class FooValidator implements Validator {

    @Override
    public boolean supports(Class<?> clazz) {
        return Foo.class.equals(clazz);
    }

    @Override
    public void validate(Object target, Errors errors) {

        Foo foo = (Foo) target;

        if(foo.getName() == null) {
            errors.rejectValue("name", "name[emptyMessage]");
        }
        else if(foo.getName().length() < 1 || foo.getName().length() > 20){
            errors.rejectValue("name", "name[invalidLength]");
        }

        if(foo.getAge() == null) {
            errors.rejectValue("age", "age[emptyMessage]");
        }
        else if(foo.getAge() < 1 || foo.getAge() > 110){
            errors.rejectValue("age", "age[invalidAge]");
        }
    }
}

If using the above validator, you also have to bind the validator to the Spring controller (not necessary if using annotations):

@InitBinder("foo")
protected void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
    binder.setValidator(new FooValidator());
}

Also see Spring docs.

Hope that helps.

Find complete example of Spring Mvc Validation

import org.springframework.validation.Errors;
import org.springframework.validation.ValidationUtils;
import org.springframework.validation.Validator;
import com.technicalkeeda.bean.Login;

public class LoginValidator implements Validator {
    public boolean supports(Class aClass) {
        return Login.class.equals(aClass);
    }

    public void validate(Object obj, Errors errors) {
        Login login = (Login) obj;
        ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "userName",
                "username.required", "Required field");
        ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "userPassword",
                "userpassword.required", "Required field");
    }
}


public class LoginController extends SimpleFormController {
    private LoginService loginService;

    public LoginController() {
        setCommandClass(Login.class);
        setCommandName("login");
    }

    public void setLoginService(LoginService loginService) {
        this.loginService = loginService;
    }

    @Override
    protected ModelAndView onSubmit(Object command) throws Exception {
        Login login = (Login) command;
        loginService.add(login);
        return new ModelAndView("loginsucess", "login", login);
    }
}