Detect the protocol http / mailto etc, then you can refine the regexp accordingly. Typically mailto can delegate to the EmailValidator

Consider higher level validations, such as email, URL, credit card, etc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Key: HV-19 URL: http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/hibernate/browse/HV-19 Project: Hibernate Validator Issue Type: New Feature Components: validators Reporter: Ted Bergeron Assignee: Diego Pires Plentz Priority: Minor I was looking at the release notes for commons validator 1.2 http://wiki.apache.org/jakarta-commons/ValidatorVersion120 and wondered if the higher level constructs fit the design goals of hibernate validator. They have email, URL, Credit card and ISBN. These could all be handled via @Pattern with regex matching a constant declared somewhere. Would it be desirable to have Hibernate supply the values for these constants? Such as: @Pattern(type="email") or @Pattern(regex=org.hibernate.validator.Pattern.EMAIL) or @Email Email and URL are global patterns. This probably wouldn't work for something like phone number which is locale sensitive.