Spring MVC Validation not working (Annotation)

Question

I'm trying to use annotation validation, but it's not working. Here's my Service Interface where I'm applying the validation:

package com.tehras.web.service;

import com.tehras.web.annotations.ValidCategory;
import com.tehras.web.models.MenuCategory;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
import org.springframework.validation.annotation.Validated;

import javax.validation.Valid;
import java.util.List;

/**
 * Created by Taras on 6/17/2014.
 */
@Validated
@Service
public interface IMenuCategoriesService {

    /*
     @Return List<MenuCategory>
     */
    public List<MenuCategory> getMenuCategories();
    /*
    @Return boolean
     */
    public boolean addMenuCategory(@ValidCategory MenuCategory menuCategory);
    /*
    @Return boolean
     */
    public boolean removeMenuCategories(List<MenuCategory> menuCategoryList);

    public boolean containsCategoryName(String categoryName);
}

And here's my Validation class

@Target({METHOD, FIELD, ANNOTATION_TYPE, CONSTRUCTOR, PARAMETER})
@Retention(RUNTIME)
@Documented
@Constraint(validatedBy = {ValidCategoryImpl.class, ValidCategoryNameImpl.class})
public @interface ValidCategory {
        String message() default "This Category Does not Seem to Allowed";

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

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

And finally my Impl class:

@Component
public class ValidCategoryImpl implements ConstraintValidator<ValidCategory, MenuCategory> {

    @Autowired
    IMenuCategoriesService menuCategoriesService;

    @Override
    public void initialize(ValidCategory constraintAnnotation){
    }

    @Override
    public boolean isValid(MenuCategory menuCategory, ConstraintValidatorContext context){
        return menuCategoriesService.containsCategoryName(menuCategory.getTitle());
    }
}

Please help! I've been stuck for this and can't fix it! When i pass in the menuCategory it doesn't even go into the validation method? please help!

..Can't add a commment, but to answer the why question, this is what i think:

Similar to how @NotNull or @Size is invoked, I created my custom class, where my implementation is this - ConstraintValidator, so when MenuCategory is there it should go into this implementation method since I have @ValidCategory set-up to do so. What's your opinion? How do I make sure that validation happens?

@ValidCategory should validate public boolean addMenuCategory(@ValidCategory MenuCategory menuCategory); — tehras, Jun 23 '14 at 02:39
Validation doesn't just happen on its own. It has to be configured somewhere. Where is that done in your application? — Sotirios Delimanolis, Jun 23 '14 at 02:47
I could _maybe_ help you more if you show us an example of the behavior you are trying to simulate (ex. `@NotNull` and `@Size`). — Sotirios Delimanolis, Jun 23 '14 at 02:53
The Custom validator checks whether MenuCategory.getTitle() already exists in the database.. So as you can see in the interface class I have '@ValidCategory' to check whether MenuCategory with the same name already exists. So similar to how '@NotNull' checks if the String or Object is null, I'm just checking whether the object exists in my database. — tehras, Jun 23 '14 at 02:58
The short answer is that Spring does not provide anything to do validation in `@Service` methods. You'll have to write that functionality yourself. This will not be a simple task. — Sotirios Delimanolis, Jun 23 '14 at 03:07
I can move this to another layer, either controller or my Dao, but it still doesn't work? — tehras, Jun 23 '14 at 03:09
Can you explain the use case when addMenuCategory is called? — Haim Raman, Jun 23 '14 at 04:26
@SotiriosDelimanolis What about this one - http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/3.1.x/javadoc-api/org/springframework/validation/beanvalidation/MethodValidationPostProcessor.html / http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19425221/spring-validated-in-service-layer ? — Pavel Horal, Jun 23 '14 at 04:26
The use case is just to add a new Menu Category, but i want to check for duplicates first. Obviously I can do it simpler ways, but I think this annotation method should work, and give me flexibility in the future if I need to add more logic behind validation. — tehras, Jun 23 '14 at 12:50

Spring MVC Validation not working (Annotation)

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