Hibernate validator NotEmpty trim issue

Question

It appears that the Hibernate NotEmpty annotation does not result in an error for strings filled with whitespace (" "). Only works for nulls or empty strings (ie: new String()). Is there a workaround/fix for this?

Answer 1

@NotEmpty is used to check size rather than contents and applies to Collections as well as Strings. The functionality you're looking for is provided in @NotBlank which is specific to Strings and ignores trailing whitespace.