JSR validator bean missing if a custom Spring Validator bean is present

[oyvindhorneland]

This problem occurred after upgrade from Spring Boot 1.5.2 to 1.5.3.

I have some custom Spring validator beans for Spring Data REST while also relying on standard JSR validator in other parts of the application.

After upgrading from Spring Boot 1.5.2 to 1.5.3 there is no longer a JSR validator bean present.

Error:

Bean method 'defaultValidator' in 'DefaultValidatorConfiguration' not loaded because @ConditionalOnMissingBean (types: javax.validation.Validator,org.springframework.validation.Validator; SearchStrategy: all) found beans 'beforeSaveUserValidator', 'beforeCreateGroupValidator', 'beforeCreateUserValidator'

Debug auto configuration:

DefaultValidatorConfiguration#defaultValidator:
      Did not match:
         - @ConditionalOnMissingBean (types: javax.validation.Validator,org.springframework.validation.Validator; SearchStrategy: all) found beans 'beforeSaveUserValidator', 'beforeCreateGroupValidator', 'beforeCreateUserValidator' (OnBeanCondition)

c9561f0 changed this behaviour since it does not provide a validator if a Spring validator is present.

Not sure if this is should be considered a bug and I can easily work around this problem and provide this bean myself, but perhaps Spring Boot could create a JSR validator if not present?

[oyvindhorneland]

Also the Spring validators for Spring Data REST only supports a specific class. Perhaps Spring Boot autoconfiguration should check if a LocalValidatorFactoryBean bean is present and create if missing?

[philwebb]

Thanks for the report. We missed the user-case where a Spring Validator is present but it doesn't implement JSR 303 validation.

Can you share the your validator bean definitions? I'm curious which classes you used.

Also the Spring validators for Spring Data REST only supports a specific class. Perhaps Spring Boot autoconfiguration should check if a LocalValidatorFactoryBean bean is present and create if missing?

Can you point me at the part of Spring Data that does this?

[oyvindhorneland]

An example validator bean looks like this: https://gist.github.com/oyvindhorneland/c16d727e96ab7facb195fd3ab39a5c7b

The bean definition must be manually provided, as documented in http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/rest/docs/2.6.3.RELEASE/reference/html/#validation. They are invoked from https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-data-rest/blob/master/spring-data-rest-core/src/main/java/org/springframework/data/rest/core/event/ValidatingRepositoryEventListener.java.

Official samples for registering these validators seem to be lacking and spring-projects/spring-data-examples#150 requests such a sample, however I found the guide in http://www.baeldung.com/spring-data-rest-validators helpful.

[oyvindhorneland]

Superb! Thank you!

[snicoll]

@oyvindhorneland a new 1.5.4.BUILD-SNAPSHOT with the fix is available. Would you be so kind to test it on your project please?

If you need instructions to add the necessary snapshot repo, you can create an empty app from start.spring.io. Thanks!

[oyvindhorneland]

@snicoll 1.5.4.BUILD-SNAPSHOT works well and fixes this issue. One less bean to manage 👍

[asaarnak]

After update from 1.5.3 to 1.5.4 and an autoconfig error appears.
Using @qualifier("beanValidatorFactory") fixes this, but is it expected?

Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.NoUniqueBeanDefinitionException: No qualifying bean of type 'javax.validation.Validator' available: more than one 'primary' bean found among candidates: [beanValidatorFactory, defaultValidator]
	at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.determinePrimaryCandidate(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:1372)
	at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.determineAutowireCandidate(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:1333)
	at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.doResolveDependency(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:1113)
	at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.resolveDependency(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:1066)
	at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor$AutowiredFieldElement.inject(AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:585)
	... 66 more

[snicoll]

@asaarnak this issue is closed. If you believe you've found an issue, please create a separate issue with a sample that reproduces the problem. Thanks!

[asaarnak]

@snicoll Finally i had time to take a look at this issue and managed to workaround it.
We were returning javax.validation.ValidationFactory as bean type so the following condition created new bean defaultValidator.

@ConditionalOnMissingBean(type = { "javax.validation.Validator", "org.springframework.validation.Validator" })

The fix was to return the LocalValidatorFactoryBean type instead of ValidatorFactory.
@Bean public LocalValidatorFactoryBean beanValidatorFactory()