JSR 303: How to Validate a Collection of annotated objects?

Question

Is it possible to validate a collection of objects in JSR 303 - Jave Bean Validation where the collection itself does not have any annotations but the elements contained within do?

For example, is it possible for this to result in a constraint violation due to a null name on the second person:

List<Person> people = new ArrayList<Person>(); people.add(new Person("dave")); people.add(new Person(null));  Validator validator = Validation.buildDefaultValidatorFactory().getValidator(); Set<ConstraintViolation<List<Person>>> validation = validator.validate(people); 

Answer 1

Yes, just add @Valid to the collection.

Here is an example from the Hibernate Validator Reference.

public class Car {   @NotNull   @Valid   private List<Person> passengers = new ArrayList<Person>(); } 

This is standard JSR-303 behavior. See Section 3.1.3 of the spec.