Re: [hibernate-dev] [HV] Design philosophy
On 11 avr. 2012, at 12:03, Hardy Ferentschik wrote:
>
> If we go back to our example, @Email(regexp=""^((?!\\.org).)*$") is
not really 5 nor even 2 times better than @Email
@Pattern((regexp=""^((?!\\.org).)*$")
I am not sure how one would measure this leverage factor so I stay out of it. Adding the
regexp is backwards compatible, its optional and hence for most users
not visible. If you are going to need it you have the choice between:
@Email(regexp=""^((?!\\.org).)*$")
or
@Email
@Pattern((regexp=""^((?!\\.org).)*$")
I don't see any harm here. In fact I think that the first version even adds a little
more context information, because it tells me that the main concern is about making sure
that we have an email (meeting an additional validation criteria). In the second case the
@Pattern could also be just replacing a @NotEmpty (depending on the
regular expression of course) constraint.
To me, it adds complexity :
- in HV's code but that's not a strong factor in this case
- more doc
- as a user looking at @Email when I use it, I have to understand why such an option has
been added and if I need it
And I don't see why you don't add regexp to CreditCardNumber, ModCheck, NotBlank,
NotEmpty and SafeHtml. There are "equally valid" use cases for that. But if you
add them to all these annotations, I will start to question your massive duplication
error.
> And frankly, regexp is about the less readable construct in the history of
programming languages.
and one of the most powerful one as well :-)
Sure but we have @Pattern for that already :)
> I am not against some functional flags to
> restrict the domain, ensure that it's an email address reachable from the
internet etc etc
I am not against additional flags either, and I was in fact thinking whether a
"reachable" flag to @Email and @URL would make sense. This is something which is
outside
the character based validation. Regarding the domain restriction flag, where do you draw
the line? Do you want a includeDomain, excludeDomain, includeUser, excludeUser,
allowGmail, disallowYahoo, … - or do you rather add a regexp flag?
That's the thing, you have to draw a line in the sand and find the top n use cases you
think an annotation can deal with without becoming a Christmas tree. Thinking about it, I
think it would make sense to offer a setting to enforce the email does not address the
local network but is globally accessible. About domain restriction, I'm thinking that
invalid address != not from the expected domain and a separate constraint makes more
sense.