Question

I have added <mvc:annotation-driven/> to my Spring configuration, and according to the documentation it will provide:

Support for validating @Controller inputs with @Valid, if a JSR-303 Provider is present on the classpath. The validation system can be explicitly configured by setting the validator attribute.

From this and other documents, I have taken it to mean that I no longer need to explicitly inject a validator within my controller classes and it will be done automatically. Is this correct?

Currently I need to have the following in my controller:

@Autowired
private Validator validator;

@InitBinder
public void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
    binder.setValidator(validator);
}

Can anyone clear this up for me? Thanks

Answer 1

Yes, it’s correct. With <mvc:annotation-driven> you don’t need to inject validator explicitly.

Note that in a typical Spring MVC application you have two application contexts, see here for more details, and <mvc:annotation-driven> must be declared in the DispatcherServlet‘s context.