Spring JPA doesn't validate bean on update

Question

I'm using Spring Boot 1.5.7, Spring JPA, Hibernate validation, Spring Data REST, Spring HATEOAS.

I've a simple bean like this:

@Entity
public class Person {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;

    @NotBlank
    private String name;
}

As you can see I'm using @NotBlank. According to Hibernate documentation the validation should be made on pre-persist and pre-update.

I created a junit test:

@Test(expected = ConstraintViolationException.class)
public void saveWithEmptyNameThrowsException() {  
    Person person = new Person();
    person.setName("");
    personRepository.save(person);
}

this test works fine and therefore the validation process happens correctly. Instead in this test case, the validation doesn't work:

@Test(expected = ConstraintViolationException.class)
public void saveWithEmptyNameThrowsException() {
   Person person = new Person();
   person.setName("Name");
   personRepository.save(person);

   person.setName("");
   personRepository.save(person);
}

I found another similar question but unfortunately there isn't any reply. Why the validation is not made on update() method? Advice to solve the problem?

Answer 1

I think ConstraintViolationException is not occurred because during update Hibernate don't flush result to database on the spot. Try to replace in your test save() with saveAndFlush().