[hibernate-issues] [Hibernate-JIRA] Resolved: (BVAL-4) Return value for @NotEmpty for null values

Return value for @NotEmpty for null values ------------------------------------------ Key: BVAL-4 URL: http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/hibernate/browse/BVAL-4 Project: Bean Validation Issue Type: Task Components: spec-general Reporter: Hardy Ferentschik Fix For: 1.0 public draft The spec says: "While not mandatory, it is considered a good parctice to split the core constraint from the not null constraint validation ..." As examples we have @Email and @Length, but would the same not apply for @NotEmpty. From a programmers point of view I think @NotEmpty should return true for null values. However, one could argue that from a GUI perspective it would not make sense to get to different validation messages. In fact, a user does not know what it means that the value cannot be null. However, any decent GUI/web framework will make sure that a string value will always be passed as empty string when nothing is entered by the user.