Bean Validation XML entire bean

Question

I am required to use bean validation using XML.

We can validate the whole class by putting annotations just before the class declaration.

@AtLeastOneNotNull
public class SampleBean {
    // ...
}

And then use reflection to loop over the fields.

---

How can I achieve the same thing using XML bean validation?

<constraint-mappings xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://jboss.org/xml/ns/javax/validation/mapping validation-mapping-1.0.xsd" xmlns="http://jboss.org/xml/ns/javax/validation/mapping">

    <default-package>my.package</default-package>
    <bean class="SampleBean">
        <!-- ? -->
    </bean>
</constraint-mappings>

All I can declare after <bean> is <field>.

My goal is to validate multiple fields dependencies using XML bean validation.
For example :

• at least one field must be filled
• if field1 is null then field2 isn't

Answer 1

Please check the documentation for Bean Validation 2.0 (If you still use the older version - here's the same link to 1.0 version) There's Example 9.2 showing what you need:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<constraint-mappings
        xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/validation/mapping"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/validation/mapping
            http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/validation/mapping/validation-mapping-2.0.xsd"
        version="2.0">
    <default-package>com.acme.app.domain</default-package>
    <bean class="Customer" ignore-annotations="false">
        <class ignore-annotations="true">
            [...]
        </class>
    </bean>

</constraint-mappings>

So to answer your question you should be able to put:

<bean class="SampleBean" ignore-annotations="false">
    <class ignore-annotations="true">
        [...]
    </class>
</bean>

and define your constraints. Also if you are using Hibernate Validator you might want to look at ScripAssert constraint - it would allow you to write a simple script check and you wouldn't need to write your own constraint for checking if at least one filed is not null. Hope this helps.