Kotlin Spring bean validation nullability

Question

In my Spring application that is built with Kotlin I would like to use bean validation on a data class that looks like this.

data class CustomerDto(
    @field: NotBlank
    val firstName: String,

    @field: NotBlank
    val lastName: String)

On sending a post with an empty firstName to the customer endpoint I would like to get the constraint validations but due to the fields not allowing null values I don't get the validations but rather get the following error.

"status": 400,
"error": "Bad Request",
"message": "JSON parse error: Instantiation of [simple type, class pkg.CustomerDto] value failed for JSON property firstName due to missing (therefore NULL) value for creator parameter firstName which is a non-nullable type; nested exception is com.fasterxml.jackson.module.kotlin.MissingKotlinParameterException: Instantiation of [simple type, class pkg.CustomerDto] value failed for JSON property firstName due to missing (therefore NULL) value for creator parameter firstName which is a non-nullable type\n at [Source: (PushbackInputStream); line: 19, column: 1] (through reference chain: pkg.CustomerDto[\"firstName\"])",
"path": "/shop/5/customer"

Is there any other option to mark the dto field as not optional and still get the constraint violations? When I mark them as being optional I have to use the !! on the not nullable fields in the code when mapping them to my entities.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I believe you are going at it the wrong way.

Kotlin's null safety operators exact purpose is to enforce you to explicitly express nullability behavior in your code in order to drastically minimize NPE, or at least make sure you knowingly caused them yourself :). In your (or any MVC like access pattern) case, you are faced with the following scenario

• Field might be null as part of the DTO payload
• Framework validation should disqualify the DTO if field is null.
• If framework validation has succeeded, the DTO field is implicitly assumed to be not null.

Though it makes sense in terms of logical flow, it's actually a violation that may result in an NPE, because nothing in the model/contract guarantees these fields won't be null

Still, In java, you'd have just made that final assumption using a getter(you'd have been using a getter anyway, it's java, right?).

Well - it's no different in kotlin, if that's what you require:

data class CustomerDto(@field:NotNull 
                       @JsonProperty("firstName") private val _firstName: String? = null,
                       @field:NotNull
                       @JsonProperty("lastName") private val _lastName: String? = null) {
        val firstName get() = _firstName!!
        val lastName get() = _lastName!!
    }

(This examples assumes you are using jackson for JSON de/serialization)

While still manually forcing non-nullability using the !! operator (which is something you wanted to avoid), you are now abstracting that aspect from the rest of your codebase, getting that java-getter like behavior

Answer 2

I think a better solution is to use Kotlin's default value inside properties:

data class CustomerDto(
@field: NotBlank
val firstName: String="",

@field: NotBlank
val lastName: String="")

First name and last name attributes will always have a value (from json or default value =""). The solution is not perfect but It works like it was expected.