[hibernate-issues] [Hibernate-JIRA] Commented: (BVAL-256) Provide means for disabling constraints from super types

[Matthew Hillier (JIRA)]

    [ https://hibernate.onjira.com/browse/BVAL-256?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=46064#comment-46064 ] 

Matthew Hillier commented on BVAL-256:
--------------------------------------

Just following on from the discussion on [http://lists.jboss.org/pipermail/beanvalidation-dev/2012-January/000137.html].

We would be very much in favour of some sort of @IngoreInheritedContraints annotation / processing. The use-case we are currently blocked on is one where we have a class-hierarchy that describes the fields required for an output file, based on country. As an example:

We have a base bean file that describes all of the fields we are interested in capturing. By Default, we mark all fields as not required (@Size(min=0,max=0)), so that extending classes should only need to declare those fields that are required for the specific output file they implement.
{code}
public abstract class BaseFileRecord {

...

    @Size(min=0,max=0,message="Name is not required")
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    @Size(min=0,max=0,message="Account Number is not required")
    public String getAccountNumber() {
        return accountNumber;
    }

    @Size(min=0,max=0,message="Account Code is not required")
    public String getAccountCode() {
        return accountCode;
    }

}
{code}

For a file of "Type A", we implement a sub-class that defines the fields that are generally required for this type of file. Note that the Constraint violations now conflict with the ones that were inherited.

{code}
public class TypeAFileRecord extends BaseFileRecord {

    @NotNull
    @Size(min=1,max=50,message="Name should be no more than 50 characters")
    @Override
    public String getName() {
        return super.getName();
    }

    @NotNull
    @Size(min=8,max=8)
    @Override
    public String getAccountNumber() {
        return super.getAccountNumber();
    }

}
{code}

For one country (in this case SG) the file of Type A describes that the "accountNumber" field should be 10 characters, and not 8. We would expect to implement this as follows.

{code}
public class TypeAFileRecordSG extends TypeAFileRecord {

    @NotNull
    @Size(min=10,max=10)
    @Override
    public String getAccountNumber() {
        return super.getAccountNumber();
    }

}
{code}

Note that in our implementation we are also using some custom annotations and the PropertyDescriptor / PropertyTypeDescriptor from the Spring framework to specify some additional requirements, such as whether a field is visible to the user or not. Using this, the PropertyTypeDescriptor instances all work as expected in that they only return the annotations on the lower-most implementation of each method.

If BVAL were to support an @OverrideConstraint or @IgnoreInheritedConstraint annotation then this would allow our developers to ensure that their expectations for annotations are consistent.

I note that the XML validation configuration allows for this type of overriding to be done, which is all fair and good, but I would prefer that developers were able to configure all of these meta-data items in one place, so to reduce the risk of them missing vital configuration.

> Provide means for disabling constraints from super types
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: BVAL-256
>                 URL: https://hibernate.onjira.com/browse/BVAL-256
>             Project: Bean Validation
>          Issue Type: New Feature
>          Components: spec-general
>            Reporter: Gunnar Morling
>
> It might be useful to have a way to disable/override constraints from super types (as of BV 1.0 all constraints declared on super types are applied to sub-types also).
> Mailing list reference: http://lists.jboss.org/pipermail/beanvalidation-dev/2012-January/000128.html

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