Question

Having a @MappedSuperClass SomeClass (see below for a minimal example), is it possible to overwrite a @Pattern via @AttributeOverride in SomeOtherclass that extends SomeClass?

@MappedSuperClass
public abstract class SomeClass {

@Column(name = "NAME", length = 255, unique = false, nullable = true)
@Pattern(regex = "([a-zA-Z0-9]+_)*([a-zA-Z0-9]+)")
        private String name;
    …
}



@AttributeOverride(name = "name", column = @Column(name = "NAME", length = 20, unique = false, nullable = false))
public class SomeOtherClass extends SomeClass {

    ….

}

Or is there any other way to define a new @Pattern for inherited classes?

Answer 1

This is not possible. The @AttributeOverride and @Pattern annotations are not parts of the same specification.

@AttributeOverride is part of the JPA specification and allows you to override the column definition of a property in an entity subclass.

@Pattern is part of the bean validation (JSR 303) specification and allows you to specify a regular expression to match the annotated member against. You cannot override a @Pattern annotation, but you can cumulatively apply new patterns in subclasses, assuming you are annotating your methods and not your fields.

See this somewhat related answer.