Roo and User Constraints

[tunaranch]

Does roo not yet wire up Error messages from user defined constraints at the web tier?

Here's the log from when validation fails:

Invoking request handler method: public java.lang.String noticeservice.domain.NoticeController.create(noticeservice.domain.Notice,org.springframework.validation.BindingResult,org.springframework.ui.ModelMap)
ValidationMessages not found. Delegating to org.hibernate.validation.ValidationMessages
Cannot find javax.persistence.PersistenceUtil on classpath. All properties will per default be traversable.
No META-INF/validation.xml found. Using annotation based configuration only!
ValidationMessages not found. Delegating to org.hibernate.validation.ValidationMessages
Invoking init-binder method: public void noticeservice.domain.NoticeController.initBinder(org.springframework.web.bind.WebDataBinder)
Requested media types are [text/html, application/xhtml+xml, application/xml;q=0.9, */*;q=0.8] (based on Accept header)
Returning [org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView: name 'notice/create'; URL [notice/create]] based on requested media type 'text/html'
Rendering view [org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView: name 'notice/create'; URL [notice/create]] in DispatcherServlet with name 'noticeservice'
Added model object 'notice' of type [noticeservice.domain.Notice] to request in view with name 'notice/create'
Added model object 'org.springframework.validation.BindingResult.notice' of type [org.springframework.validation.BeanPropertyBindingResult] to request in view with name 'notice/create'
Added model object 'org.springframework.validation.BindingResult.objectError' of type [org.springframework.validation.BeanPropertyBindingResult] to request in view with name 'notice/create'
Added model object 'objectError' of type [org.springframework.validation.ObjectError] to request in view with name 'notice/create'
Render request recieved for definition 'notice/create'
Successfully completed request

My bean looks something like this:

@Entity
@RooJavaBean
@RooToString
@RooEntity(finders = { "findNoticesByStartDateGreaterThanAndEndDateLessThan" })
@StartDateBeforeEndDate() // Custom constraint
public class Notice {

    @NotNull
    private Date startDate;

    @NotNull
    private Date endDate;

 
}

and the constraint looks something like:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target(ElementType.TYPE)
@Documented
@Constraint(validatedBy = StartDateBeforeEndDateValidator.class)
public @interface StartDateBeforeEndDate {

	String message() default "startDate must be before endDate";

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

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

}

There's nothing special about the Validator either:

public class StartDateBeforeEndDateValidator implements ConstraintValidator<StartDateBeforeEndDate, Notice> {

	@Override
	public void initialize(StartDateBeforeEndDate constraintAnnotation) {
		// Do nothing...

	}

	@Override
	public boolean isValid(Notice notice, ConstraintValidatorContext context) {
		if (notice == null)
			return true;
		return notice.getStartDate().before(notice.getEndDate());

	}

}

Am I going about this the wrong way? Maybe I should use a checkCoherence sort of method with an @AssertTrue, but will that work on the web tier?

[tunaranch]

Validation works, it's just that the error is not displayed.

Filed issue http://jira.springframework.org/browse/ROO-360

[Stefan Schmidt]

Haikal,

Thanks for raising this. Indeed I was already considering to put in a 'catch all' error panel so all errors which are not related to fields are displayed as well. I was thinking presenting an inner title pane in the view which is collapsed by default. So the interested user can open it up to see the details. Other ideas?

-Stefan

[tunaranch]

I would leave it open by default. If it's an input, validation or data integrity type error (As opposed to, say a RuntimeException) the user will mostly care about it, imho.

That said, though, my orginal use case was 'start date before end date', but I have since figured out how to assign that error to a field.

[tbender]

Hi,

I also noticed, that when you specify a length constraint, the maxlength field for inputs on the ui is not adjusted.

Example:

public class Customer {

    ...

    @Size(min=0, max=120)
    private String street;
    ...

Presentation:

<form:input cssStyle="width:250px" id="_street_id" maxlength="30" path="street" size="0"/>

Is that a bug or am I missing something?