I have been trying to get @Valid to work in a composite constraint but no luck so far. I went through HV documentation and searched online to find out if @Valid is not supported in composite constraints but I can't find any mention of that.

Here is a simple example that shows the issue:

public class Foo {

   @NotNull                      // without composite constraint. both work as expected
   @Valid                          
   Bar bar

   @NotNullAndValid           // composite constraint consisting of @NotNull and @Valid
   Baz baz;                           // @NotNull gets applied but cascade validation (@Valid) does not

}




@NotNull
@Valid
@Constraint(validatedBy={})

// RUNTIME retention, FIELD target for simplicity

public @interface NotNullAndValid {

   // message, groups, payload

}

So my question is this: Is @Valid supported in composite constraint? If not, can you please point me to some online resource that explains why.

My guess is that it's not supported for the following reason: @Valid does not support groups (i.e., if you have @Valid declared somewhere then cascade validation will always take place regardless of the validation group that was specified in/passed to the validator API call). On the other hand, composite constraints support groups/can be turned on/off by validating a bean for a specific group. If @Valid were to be placed in a composite constraint then you effectively make @Valid support groups (i.e., cascade validation will become group based rather than the mere presence/absence of @Valid constraint).

Any thoughts?