[bv-dev] BVAL-192 'exclusive' flag for @DecimalMin/@DecimalMax

[Hardy Ferentschik]

Hi,

I was looking at one of the minor changes on the BV 1.1 roadmap [1] - BVAL-192 [2].
The idea is to add a exclusive flag to the annotation @DecimalMin and @DecmimalMax.
This way you could for example easily express a negative non-zero decimal number:

@DecimalMax(value = "0.0", exclusive = true)

When dealing with decimal number such a flag can indeed simplify things, however it creates
a problem when dealing with error messages. At the moment the message for DecimalMax is for
example: "must be less than or equal to {value}". Depending on the exclusive flag this message would
need to change though. Two versions of the message would be required. Technically the right version 
of the message could be selected via ConstraintValidatorContext, but it would be a first for built-in
constraints. We would also need to define the name for alternative messages. Would it be: 

javax.validation.constraints.DecimalMax.message1
javax.validation.constraints.DecimalMax.message2

or 

javax.validation.constraints.DecimalMax.inclusive.message
javax.validation.constraints.DecimalMax.exclusive.message

I hope this rather simple question creates some welcome breaking-up from the harder questions like
"should we consider getters for method validation" ;-)

--Hardy


[1] http://beanvalidation.org/roadmap/
[2] https://hibernate.onjira.com/browse/BVAL-192