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Spring 3 MVC and JSR303 @Valid example

In Spring 3, you can enable “mvc:annotation-driven” to support JSR303 bean validation via @Valid annotation, if any JSR 303 validator framework on the classpath.

Note
Hibernate Validator is the reference implementation for JSR 303

In this tutorial, we show you how to integrate Hibernate validator with Spring MVC, via @Valid annotation, to perform bean validation in a HTML form.

Technologies used :

  1. Spring 3.0.5.RELEASE
  2. Hibernate Validator 4.2.0.Final
  3. JDK 1.6
  4. Eclipse 3.6
  5. Maven 3

1. Project Dependencies

Hibernate validator is available at JBoss public repository.


	<repositories>
		<repository>
			<id>JBoss repository</id>
			<url>http://repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
		</repository>
	</repositories>
	
	<properties>
		<spring.version>3.0.5.RELEASE</spring.version>
	</properties>

	<dependencies>

		<!-- Spring 3 dependencies -->
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
			<version>${spring.version}</version>
		</dependency>

		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
			<version>${spring.version}</version>
		</dependency>

		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
			<version>${spring.version}</version>
		</dependency>

		<!-- Hibernate Validator -->
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
			<artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
			<version>4.2.0.Final</version>
		</dependency>

	</dependencies>

2. JSR303 Bean Validation

A simple POJO, annotated with Hibernate validator annotation.

Note
Refer to this Hibernate validator documentation for detail explanation

package com.mkyong.common.model;

import org.hibernate.validator.constraints.NotEmpty;
import org.hibernate.validator.constraints.Range;

public class Customer {

	@NotEmpty //make sure name is not empty
	String name;

	@Range(min = 1, max = 150) //age need between 1 and 150
	int age;

	//getter and setter methods

}

3. Controller + @Valid

For validation to work, just annotate the “JSR annotated model object” via @Valid. That’s all, other stuff is just a normal Spring MVC form handling.


package com.mkyong.common.controller;

import javax.validation.Valid;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.ModelMap;
import org.springframework.validation.BindingResult;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import com.mkyong.common.model.Customer;

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/customer")
public class SignUpController {

	@RequestMapping(value = "/signup", method = RequestMethod.POST)
	public String addCustomer(@Valid Customer customer, BindingResult result) {

		if (result.hasErrors()) {
			return "SignUpForm";
		} else {
			return "Done";
		}

	}

	@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
	public String displayCustomerForm(ModelMap model) {

		model.addAttribute("customer", new Customer());
		return "SignUpForm";

	}

}

4. Error Message

By default, if validation failed.

  1. @NotEmpty will display “may not be empty”
  2. @Range will display “must be between 1 and 150”

You can override it easily, create a properties with “key” and message. To know which @annotation bind to which key, just debug it and view value inside “BindingResult result“. Normally, the key is “@Annotation Name.object.fieldname“.

File : messages.properties


NotEmpty.customer.name = Name is required!
Range.customer.age = Age value must be between 1 and 150

5. mvc:annotation-driven

Enable “mvc:annotation-driven” to make Spring MVC supports JSR303 validator via @Valid, and also bind your properties file.


<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
	xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc" 
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd">

	<context:component-scan base-package="com.mkyong.common.controller" />

         <!-- support JSR303 annotation if JSR 303 validation present on classpath -->
	<mvc:annotation-driven />

	<bean id="viewResolver"
		class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
		<property name="prefix">
			<value>/WEB-INF/pages/</value>
		</property>
		<property name="suffix">
			<value>.jsp</value>
		</property>
	</bean>
    
        <!-- bind your messages.properties -->
	<bean class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource"
		id="messageSource">
		<property name="basename" value="messages" />
	</bean>

</beans>

6. JSP Pages

Last one, normal JSP page with Spring form tag library.

File : SignUpForm.jsp


<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form"%>
<html>
<head>
<style>
.error {
	color: #ff0000;
}

.errorblock {
	color: #000;
	background-color: #ffEEEE;
	border: 3px solid #ff0000;
	padding: 8px;
	margin: 16px;
}
</style>
</head>

<body>
	<h2>Customer SignUp Form - JSR303 @Valid example</h2>

	<form:form method="POST" commandName="customer" action="customer/signup">
		<form:errors path="*" cssClass="errorblock" element="div" />
		<table>
			<tr>
				<td>Customer Name :</td>
				<td><form:input path="name" /></td>
				<td><form:errors path="name" cssClass="error" /></td>
			</tr>
			<tr>
				<td>Customer Age :</td>
				<td><form:input path="age" /></td>
				<td><form:errors path="age" cssClass="error" /></td>
			</tr>
			<tr>
				<td colspan="3"><input type="submit" /></td>
			</tr>
		</table>
	</form:form>

</body>
</html>

File : Done.jsp


<html>
<body>
	<h2>Done</h2>
</body>
</html>

6. Demo

URL : http://localhost:8080/SpringMVC/customer – Customer form page, with 2 text boxes for name and age.

Spring MVC JSR303 demo page

URL : http://localhost:8080/SpringMVC/customer/signup – If you didn’t fill in the form and click on the “submit” button, your customized validation error messages will be displayed.

Spring MVC JSR303 demo page - error message

Download Source Code

References

  1. Spring JSR303 validation documentation
  2. JSR303 bean validation
  3. Hibernate Validator

About Author

author image
Founder of Mkyong.com, love Java and open source stuff. Follow him on Twitter. If you like my tutorials, consider make a donation to these charities.

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Smithe209
5 years ago

Howdy just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The words in your article seem to be running off the screen in Ie. gcgkfdededggdecf

Krish
6 years ago

message can be configured to read from the property file, but how to have the values (Min, Max, Range, Pattern, etc.) in the property files?
I don’t want the sizes to be hardcoded in the java class

firstpostcommenter
7 years ago

can @Valid and @Requestmapping annotations be used together?

DEEPAK MATHUR
7 years ago

how can i use validation in your customer signup.jsp without hibernate validation and message.properties file in spring3???

yang
8 years ago

I made this project. link : http://blog.naver.com/vest2004/220332230651

Sourabh
9 years ago

I am facing an issue while implementing the same with ajax call..can anybody help me?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28656093/spring-4-0-form-validation-issue-using-ajax/28656201?noredirect=1#

this is the link of the question.

Manoj Sawant
9 years ago

Hi mkYong,

I have one question , In Validation Examples you creating references of Customer Model class in.
-1) controllers POST() @Valid Customer customer, here reference is customer.
-2) in controllers GET() ,model.addAttribute(“customer”, new Customer()); here key is customer.
-3) in messages.property file in another example you created NotEmpty.customer.age = age is required, here also we found customer.
-4) In SignUpForm.jsp you mentioned commandName=”customer”,
I am confusing about that command name “customer”. i am not getting to whom that command name pointing?
And most important question is :
Will i have to match all the references of Customer with the same name in Controller’s GET() / Controller’s POST() / messages.properties file/ command name in jsp page ?
let me simplify my question, Can we write
@Valid Customer CUSTOMER, in controllers POST() method and
model.addAttribute(“customer”, new Customer()); in controllers GET() method
commandName=”Customer” in jsp page and
NotEmpty.CusTomeR.age = age is required. in messages.property file …???
why or why not ?

ravi mca
9 years ago

this code is not working it gives 404 status code after clicking the submit button in customer page.

please help me any one how to resolve this problem.

Jose
9 years ago

I tried to follow your example but can’t get to work with SpringFramework 4.0.2 in JBoss 7.1.1.Final.
BindingResult always returns false.
Could you please, help?

Abbas Zoher Attarwala
9 years ago

Is there a way the validation for one parameter could be dependent on the validation of another parameter?

Arjun Mukherjee
10 years ago

Hi MK,

Thanks for the above example.

My application uses only @RequestParam instead of a command class.

Suppose the above example the request is like below :

@RequestMapping(value = “/signup”, method = RequestMethod.POST)

public ModelAndView addCustomer(@RequestParam(“name”) String custName,@RequestParam(“age”) String custAge,BindingResult result){

….

}

How would you validate the requestparams and display the errors in the input page.

Note : Inorder to get the Input page (/someinoutaction.do) is expensive and calls Web Services.

Arjun Mukherjee
10 years ago

Hi MK,

Thanks for the above example.

My application uses only @RequestParam instead of a command class.

Suppose the above example the request is like below :

@RequestMapping(value = “/signup”, method = RequestMethod.POST)

public ModelAndView addCustomer(@RequestParam(“name”) String custName,@RequestParam(“age”) String custAge,BindingResult result){

….
}

How would you validate the requestparams and display the errors in the input page.
Note : Inorder to get the Input page (/someinoutaction.do) is expensive and calls Web Services.

Philip
10 years ago

Just a quick thank you for your great tutorials. You help many people with them I’m sure 🙂

venkatram
10 years ago

Thanks alot! I was actually looking for replacing message string in jpa entity with property file value.
I have Tried with injecting apache commonconfig bean to entity through aop. But they gave me errors like we cannot inject any new class as property in entity if it is not a column in the associated table.Then I tried with static resource bundle, getting value from the bundle. But, the message attribute needed constant expression. Finally I have seen your example.

How do you know that we can override the default message? What would you made to think like that? Please guide me how to read and think in the way of compiler / interpretor /
Container? How can we adopt such way of thinking..

awaiting your response..

Thanks and Regards
Venkatram

Binh Thanh Nguyen
10 years ago

Thanks, nice post.

Tarun
10 years ago

Using @Valid results in a HTTP 400 response for me

smith
10 years ago

Hi,
I am getting this error when i am deploying my application.

WARNING: No mapping found for HTTP request with URI [/] in DispatcherServlet with name ‘mvc-dispatcher’.

kerchunk
10 years ago

I’m pretty sure this setup will barf if someone were to enter a non-integer into the “age” form field , like the letter “A”, and tried to submit.

gill
10 years ago

Can we implement jsr 303 validation with ajax instead of form submit in spring

thanks
gill

Quach Thien
10 years ago

Hi, your tutorial is very helpful, but I wanna ask you what should I do if I have a insert book page, which has a dropdownlist controller bound data from database. In controller, when (result.hasError()) return ‘true’, if i return ‘book’, the error message display very well, but the data of dropdownlist has been lost. Can you help me?

Ankur Raiyani
10 years ago

Hi,

Thanks for sharing helpful tutorial.

I have a bean which contains two fields password and confirm password.
I compare these fields and add below code if they are different.

result.rejectValue("password", "exception.registration.password.mismatch","Password Mismatch");

However, this message doesn’t display on JSP in fact it isn’t added to errors.

Can you please guide as soon as possible?

Thanks

Ankur
10 years ago
Reply to  Ankur Raiyani

Problem Resolved !! 🙂

Juzer Ali
11 years ago

Its not mentioned that this example would require a validations-api jar as well. After looking at the Pom.xml I thought this is all what is needed and spent a couple of hours trying to figure out why my project is showing error.

Ramath
11 years ago

Is there a option to this Hibernate validation or any annotated validation framework in standalone Java application using Spring 3.0 framework . Thanks.

Sunil
11 years ago

I have down loaded same project and imported into eclipse.
But I’m not getting any errors for bad inputs also. Can any body help me on this.

The following code always returning false.

 if (result.hasErrors()) 

Thanks
Sunil

Sunil
11 years ago
Reply to  Sunil

sorry! ,

After coping hibernate jar into server lib , working fine.

Anyway Thanks MkYoung 🙂

David Cook
11 years ago

I have the validation working to the point it validates and generates error, but I can’t get it back to my jsp page. If I just return a reference to the page it gives me a 404. If I return a redirect to the page it goes to the page but with no errors. This is in applying your tutorial to my own project.

The start of the function in my controller is as follows

@RequestMapping(value = "/createProject", method = RequestMethod.POST)
	public String createProject(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, @Valid Project project, BindingResult result)
	{
		if(result.hasErrors())
		{
			//request.setAttribute("errors", errors);
			return "project/creatProject";
		}
David Cook
11 years ago
Reply to  David Cook

Never mind got it sorted out. Typo in createProject.

David Cook
11 years ago
Reply to  David Cook

Of note I am using an internalResourceViewResolver in my xml. Can it be done with that view resolver?

this url
11 years ago

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Disgrace on the seek engines for no longer positioning this submit higher!
Come on over and discuss with my site . Thanks =)

ColorAnt
11 years ago

Hi, thanks for you example.
Let one comment.
When me print (example)
Name: a
Age: 180

I’m redirect to “http://localhost:8080/customer/customer/signup”
with “Error 404 The requested resource is not available.”

(sorry for my english)

David Hildebrandt
11 years ago
Reply to  ColorAnt

I get the same result as ColorAnt. The first time pressing ‘Submit Query’ on the SignUpForm.jsp, the subsequent URL and mapping to the controller is fine. The first time, the URL is: http://localhost:8080/customer/signup.

The second time, if I purposefully input incorrect data again, and press ‘Submit Query’ on the SignUpForm.jsp again, the URL is http://localhost:8080/customer/customer/signup.

And I have not spent too long a time trying to figure out a solution.

David Hildebrandt
11 years ago

This worked:

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form"%>

And then, set the URL for the action this way:

<c:url value="/customer/signup" var="theAction" />
<form:form method="POST" commandName="customer" action="${theAction}">

For certain, not an elegant solution – but one that works.

dawe
11 years ago

I’ve got problem. I imported this project like a maven project, but when I start this application http://localhost:8080/SpringMVC/customer show 404 – /SpringMVC/customer. But I tried write my app with using this tutorial, validate working but I cannot see errors messages in my form 🙁

dawe
11 years ago
Reply to  dawe

Solved, with your tutorial there was a problem with Tomcat now it works, my probles resolved too..thanks for you tutorial 🙂

Chris
11 years ago

It is very helpful that you have taken the time to provide these Spring MVC tutorials across your web site. Great work!

I suggest adding usage of ${pageContext.request.contextPath}/ to the form action on SignUpForm.jsp

action="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/customer/signup"

Without this, entering invalid inputs and hitting Submit twice in a row will lead to an error (404 page not found, No mapping found for HTTP request with URI [/SpringMVC/customer/customer/signup – note double reference to “customer”). Of course, that may just be the way that I am deploying it — i.e. via the Maven Tomcat plugin, i.e. mvn tomcat:run

WP
11 years ago
Reply to  Chris

Thanks for this! I encounter this kind of problem several times and really do not know what causes the problem. When putting this code of yours into mine,everything works like a magic. Thanks a lot.

Flavio
11 years ago
Reply to  Chris

Thanks, Chris… that’s exactly what i was looking for… solved my issue.

and also thanks to mkyong… simple, clear and helpful tutorial

visu
11 years ago
Reply to  Chris

Thank you @Chris!

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