Question

I would like to use Bean Validation to annotate constraints in my entities , now the question is, will the relationships on the entities be validated as well?. For example suppose I have the following entities:

@Entity
@Table(name = "css_empresa")
public class Empresa extends EntidadContactable implements Serializable,
    Convert {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

@Id
@SequenceGenerator(name = "EMPRESA_ID_GENERATOR", sequenceName = ConstantesSecuencias.SEQ_EMPRESA)
@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator = "EMPRESA_ID_GENERATOR")
@Column(name = "cod_empresa", unique = true, nullable = false)
private Long id;

@Column(name = "num_ruc", precision = 13)
private BigDecimal numRuc;

@Column(name = "num_rup", precision = 15)
private BigDecimal numRup;

@Column(name = "txt_direccion_web", length = 255)
private String txtDireccionWeb;

@NotNull
@Column(name = "txt_nombre", nullable = false, length = 255)
private String txtNombre;

@Column(name = "txt_observaciones", length = 255)
private String txtObservaciones;

@OneToOne
@JoinColumn(name = "cod_usuario")
private Usuario administrador;

// bi-directional many-to-one association to DireccionEmpresa
@OneToMany(mappedBy = "empresa", fetch = FetchType.LAZY, cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
private List<DireccionEmpresa> direccionEmpresas;
    --Rest of code ommited for brevity

and DireccionEmpresa entity is declared as follows:

@Entity
@Table(name = "css_direccion_empresa")
public class DireccionEmpresa implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

@Id
@SequenceGenerator(name = "DIREMPRESA_ID_GENERATOR", sequenceName = ConstantesSecuencias.SEQ_DIREMPRESA)
@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator = "DIREMPRESA_ID_GENERATOR")
@Column(name = "cod_direccion_empresa", unique = true, nullable = false)
private Long codDireccionEmpresa;

@Column(name = "sts_predeterminado", nullable = false, length = 1)
private String stsPredeterminado;

@NotNull
@Column(name = "txt_calle_principal", nullable = false, length = 120)
private String txtCallePrincipal;

@NotNull
@Column(name = "txt_calle_secundaria", length = 120)
private String txtCalleSecundaria;

@Column(name = "txt_descripcion", length = 120)
private String txtDescripcion;

@Column(name = "txt_informacion_adicional", length = 120)
private String txtInformacionAdicional;

@NotNull
@Column(name = "txt_numero", nullable = false, length = 10)
private String txtNumero;

@NotNull
@Column(name = "txt_sector", nullable = false, length = 60)
private String txtSector;

Now, the question is will DireccionEmpresa constraints be checked by BeanValidation when saving Empresa?? Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

No, the constraints at DireccionEmpresa won’t be validated when persisting an instance of Empresa.

Generally a cascaded validation will only happen when a reference (such as a plain object reference or a list) is annotated with the @Valid annotation, which isn’t the case for List<DireccionEmpresa> direccionEmpresas;.

But even if that field was annotated with @Valid such a cascaded validation wouldn’t be triggered in the JPA case as the JPA 2 spec says in section 3.6.1.2:

Validation cascade (@Valid) must not occur for entity associations (single- or multi-valued). [… This guarantees] that […] no entity will be validated more than once during a given flush cycle.

So the constraints at DireccionEmpresa will only be validated automatically when persisting an instance of that type.