Validator - Configuring validation.xml

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The validation.xml file is used to declare sets of validations that should be applied to Form Beans. Each Form Bean that you want to validate has its own definition in this file. Inside that definition you specify the validations that you want to apply to the Form Bean’s fields. Following is a sample validation.xml file that illustrates how validations are defined:

The file is used to declare sets of validations that should be applied to Form Beans. Each Form Bean that you want to validate has its own definition in this file. Inside that definition you specify the validations that you want to apply to the Form Bean’s fields. Following is a sample file that illustrates how validations are defined:

<!DOCTYPE form-validation PUBLIC
          "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Commons
           Validator rules configuration .0//EN"    
          "http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/ dtds/validator_1_0.dtd">
<form-validation>
  <formset>
    <form name="logonForm">
      <field property="username" depends="required">
        <arg0 key="prompt.username"/>
      </field>
      <field property="password" depends="required">
        <arg0 key="prompt.password"/>
      </field>
    </form>
  </formset>
</form-validation>

The first element in the validation.xml file is the <form-validation> element. This element is the master element for the file and is defined only once. Inside the <form-validation> element you define <form-set> elements that encapsulate multiple <form> elements. Generally, you will define only one <form-set> element in your file; however, you would use a separate one for each locale if you were internationalizing validations.

Each <form> element uses the name attribute to associate a name to the set of field validations it encompasses. Validator uses this logical name to map the validations to a Form Bean defined in the struts-config.xml file. Based on the type of Form Bean being validated, Validator will attempt to match the name either against a Form Bean’s logical name or against an action’s path. Inside the <form> element, <field> elements are used to define the validations that will be applied to specified Form Bean fields. The <field> element’s property attribute corresponds to the name of a field in the specified Form Bean. The depends attribute specifies the logical names of validation routines from the validator-rules.xml file that should be applied to the field. The validations specified with the depends attribute will be performed in the order specified and they all must pass.

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Note 

Detailed information on configuring the validation.xml file is found in Chapter 18.

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Configuring ApplicationResources.properties

Validator uses Struts’ Resource Bundle mechanism for externalizing error messages. Instead of having hard-coded error messages in the framework, Validator allows you to specify a key to a message in the ApplicationResources.properties file that is returned if a validation fails. Each validation routine in the validator-rules.xml file specifies an error message key with the validator tag’s msg attribute, as shown here:

Validator uses Struts’ Resource Bundle mechanism for externalizing error messages. Instead of having hard-coded error messages in the framework, Validator allows you to specify a key to a message in the file that is returned if a validation fails. Each validation routine in the file specifies an error message key with the tag’s attribute, as shown here:

<validator name="required" 
      classname="org.apache.struts.validator.FieldChecks"
         method="validateRequired"
   methodParams="java.lang.Object,            
           org.apache.commons.validator.ValidatorAction,
           org.apache.commons.validator.Field,
           org.apache.struts.action.ActionErrors, 
           javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest"
      msg="errors.required">

If the validation fails when it is run, the message corresponding to the key specified by the msg attribute will be returned.

The following snippet shows the default set of validation error messages from the ApplicationResources.properties file that comes prepackaged with Struts’ example applications. Each message key corresponds to those specified by the validation routines in the validator-rules.xml file that also comes prepackaged with Struts’ example applications:

# Error messages for Validator framework validations errors.required={0} is required.
errors.minlength={0} cannot be less than {1} characters. errors.maxlength={0} cannot be greater than {2} characters. errors.invalid={0} is invalid.
errors.byte={0} must be a byte.
errors.short={0} must be a short.
errors.integer={0} must be an integer.
errors.long={0} must be a long.
errors.float={0} must be a float.
errors.double={0} must be a double.
errors.date={0} is not a date.
errors.range={0} is not in the range {1} through {2}. errors.creditcard={0} is not a valid credit card number. errors.email={0} is an invalid e-mail address.

Notice that each message has placeholders in the form of {0}, {1}, or {2}. At run time, the placeholders will be substituted for another value such as the name of the field being validated. This feature is especially useful in allowing you to create generic validation error messages that can be reused for several different fields of the same type.

Take for example the required validation’s error message, errors.required:

errors.required={0} is required.

When you use the required validation in the validation.xml file, you have to define the value that should be used to substitute {0} in the error message:

<form name="auctionForm">
  <field property="bid" depends="required">
    <arg0 key="prompt.bid"/>
  </field>
</form>

Error messages can have up to four placeholders: {0}–{3}. These placeholders are known as arg0–arg3, respectively, and can be specified using the arg0–arg3 tags. In the preceding example, the arg0 tag specifies the value that should be used to replace the {0} placeholder. This tag’s key attribute specifies a message key from the ApplicationResources.properties file, such as the one shown next, whose value will be used as the replacement for the placeholder:

prompt.bid=Auction Bid

Using a message key for the placeholder value frees you from having to hard-code the replacement value over and over in the validation.xml file. However, if you don’t want to use the Resource Bundle key/value mechanism to specify placeholder values, you can explicitly specify the placeholder value by using the following syntax for the arg0 tag:

<arg0 key="Auction Bid" resource="false"/>

In this example, the resource attribute is set to “false”, telling Validator that the value specified with the key attribute should be taken as the literal placeholder value and not as a key for a message in the ApplicationResources.properties file.

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Note 

Detailed information on the ApplicationResources.properties file is found in Chapter 10.

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Next: Enabling Client-Side Validations >>
 

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This article is taken from chapter six of the book The Complete Reference Struts, written by James Holmes (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004; ISBN: 0072231319). Check it out at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.