Can't get Hibernate Validator working with Spring MessageSource

Question

I'm trying to get Hibernate Validator setup to use messages from a Spring MessageSource. I have the following setup in my messages-context.xml:

<bean id="messageSource"
    class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource">
    <property name="basenames">
        <list>
            <value>WEB-INF/messages/messages</value>
            <value>WEB-INF/messages/exceptions</value>
            <value>WEB-INF/messages/fields</value>
            <value>WEB-INF/messages/buttons</value>
            <value>WEB-INF/messages/validation_errors</value>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="validator"
    class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean">
    <property name="validationMessageSource" ref="messageSource" />
</bean>

<bean id="localeChangeInterceptor"
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor">
    <property name="paramName" value="lang" />
</bean>

<bean id="localeResolver"
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.CookieLocaleResolver">
    <property name="defaultLocale" value="en_GB" />
</bean>

I've tried a variety of approaches to how to pass the message key to the hibernate validator (both with and without enclosing {} and also without specificying a custom key - just using the default one:

@NotEmpty(message="validation.required.field")
@Length(max=255, message="{validation.too.long}")
private String firstName;

@NotEmpty(message="{validation.required.field}")
@Length(max=255, message="{validation.too.long}")
private String lastName;

@NotNull
@Past(message="{validation.must.be.past}")
private Date dateOfBirth;

@NotEmpty(message="{validation.required.field}")
@Length(max=255, message="{validation.too.long}")
private String email;

My validation_errors_en_GB.properties looks like this:

validation.required.field=this is a required field
validation.too.long=this field can only take {0} characters
validation.must.be.past=this date has to be in the past 
javax.validation.constraints.NotNull.message=Custom message

However, when the empty fields are validated, the messages displayed are this:

First name      validation.required.field
Last name       {validation.required.field}
Date of birth   may not be null
Email           {validation.required.field}

For whatever reason, the key of the message is always used - the actual message is never looked up. Any idea where I'm going wrong?

Thanks,

Russell

Answer 1

This had me stumped for a while, but the problem is that you need to register with Spring the Validator used to validate @Controller methods (thanks to this answer for that insight!)

So if you are using XML config do something along these lines:

<bean id="validator" class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean">
    <property name="messageInterpolator" ref="messageSource"/>
</bean>

<mvc:annotation-driven validator="validator"/> 

And if you are using javaconfig, do something like this:

@EnableWebMVC
@Configuration
public MyWebAppContext extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Bean
public LocalValidatorFactoryBean validator() {
    LocalValidatorFactoryBean validatorFactoryBean = new LocalValidatorFactoryBean();
    validatorFactoryBean.setValidationMessageSource(messageSource);
    return validatorFactoryBean;
}

@Override
public Validator getValidator() {
    return validator();
}

(see Spring Web MVC framework documentation)