Hibernate Validator exception "No validator could be found for type: java.lang.String."

Question

I use Spring and Spring MVC 3.1, Hibernate 3, Hibernate Validator 4.3.

I want to add my custom constraint validator, but it seems that my validator not called and always got "No validator could be found for type" exception. Did I make any mistake? I got a big problem of getting this exception always

javax.validation.UnexpectedTypeException: HV000030: No validator could be found for type: java.lang.String.
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.engine.ConstraintTree.verifyResolveWasUnique(ConstraintTree.java:394)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.engine.ConstraintTree.findMatchingValidatorClass(ConstraintTree.java:375)

But if I remove my custom constraint validator, everything works fine. Here is my code, could you help find the source to cause this exception?

test.constraint.ActorConstraint

@Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Documented
@Constraint(validatedBy=ActorConstraintValidator.class)
public @interface ActorConstraint {

  String message() default "Actor already exists in database";
  public abstract Class<?>[] groups() default {};
  public abstract Class<? extends Payload>[] payload() default {};

}



test.constraint.ActorConstraintValidator
@Component
public class ActorConstraintValidator implements ConstraintValidator<ActorConstraint, Actor> {

  @Autowired
  private ActorModel actorModel;

  @Override
  public void initialize(ActorConstraint arg0) {
    System.out.println("ActorConstraintValidator is initialized");
  }

  @Override
  public boolean isValid(Actor actor, ConstraintValidatorContext context) {

    boolean pass = true;

    if (getActorModel().isActorExist(actor.getName()) ){
      pass = false;
    }
    return pass;
  }


  public ActorModel getActorModel() {
    return actorModel;
  }

  public void setActorModel(ActorModel actorModel) {
    this.actorModel = actorModel;
  }  
}



test.entity.Actor

@Entity  /*(findByName named query definition is omitted)*/
public class Actor implements Serializable {

  public static final String NAMED_QUERY__FIND_ACTOR_BY_NAME = "findActorByName";

  @Id
  @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
  private Long id;

  @ActorConstraint
  @NotEmpty
  private String name;

  @DateTimeFormat(iso=ISO.DATE)
  private Date birthday;

  @Min(0)
  @Max(300)
  private Integer height;

  ...
 }

extra note, I have added

<bean id="validator" class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean"/>

to spring xml

Answer 1

You put the @ActorConstraint to the field name which is of type String, while the validator type ActorConstraintValidator is parametrized with Actor. That is, there is no validator for the @ActorConstraint constraint and type String.