Hibernate Validator - calling validateProperty(object,"list[0].field1",groups) on nested list item throws IllegalArgumentException

Question

Using version Hibernate Validator 4.3.0.Final.

When I make the following call:

Set<ConstraintViolation<T>> violations = validator.validateProperty(objectForValidation, "list[0].field1", groups);

on an instance of ClassForValidation populated with one instance of ChildClassForValidation with field1 = ""

    public class ClassForValidation {

        @NotEmpty
        private String fielda;

        @Valid
        private List<ChildClassForValidation> list = new ArrayList<ChildClassForValidation>();

        public ClassForValidation(List<> list, String fielda) {
                this.list = list;
                this.fielda = fielda;
        }
    }

    public class ChildClassForValidation {
        @NotEmpty
        private String field1;

        public ChildClassForValidation(String field1) {
                this.field1 = field1;
        }
    }

I get the follwing exception:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: HV000039: Invalid property path. There is no property field1 in entity java.util.ArrayList.
at org.hibernate.validator.internal.engine.ValidatorImpl.collectMetaConstraintsForPath(ValidatorImpl.java:1141)
at org.hibernate.validator.internal.engine.ValidatorImpl.collectMetaConstraintsForPath(ValidatorImpl.java:1179)
at org.hibernate.validator.internal.engine.ValidatorImpl.validatePropertyInContext(ValidatorImpl.java:616)
at org.hibernate.validator.internal.engine.ValidatorImpl.validateProperty(ValidatorImpl.java:151)
...

After looking into the Hibernate Validator source I have come to the conclusion that this is a bug. For in the source there appears to be code attempting to handle both lists and maps. I believe the error lies in the following piece of code in org.hibernate.validator.internal.engine.ValidatorImpl

    private <T, U, V> ValueContext<U, V> collectMetaConstraintsForPath(Class<T> clazz, Object value, Iterator<Path.Node> propertyIter, PathImpl propertyPath, List<MetaConstraint<?>> metaConstraintsList) {
            Path.Node elem = propertyIter.next();
            Object newValue = value;

            BeanMetaData<?> metaData = beanMetaDataManager.getBeanMetaData( clazz );
            //use precomputed method list as ReflectionHelper#containsMember is slow
            if ( !metaData.isPropertyPresent( elem.getName() ) ) {
                throw log.getInvalidPropertyPathException( elem.getName(), metaData.getBeanClass().getName() );
            }
            ...
    }

In this piece of code it verifies that clazz has the property being validated, the problem is that when processing field1, clazz is ArrayList instead of the item(0)'s class (i.e. ChildClassForValidation).

I would like to confirm my findings before submitting a bug to the Hibernate Validator project. Who knows I might just have the wrong syntax for my property path.

Answer 1

As of Bean Validation 1.0, Validator#validateProperty() supports only the validation of single properties, but not complete property paths. As discussed on the BV mailing list, such a feature might be supported in future revisions of the spec.