Hibernate validator NotEmpty trim issue

Question

It appears that the Hibernate NotEmpty annotation does not result in an error for strings filled with whitespace (" "). Only works for nulls or empty strings (ie: new String()). Is there a workaround/fix for this?

Answer 1

Replace your @NotEmpty with a @Pattern annotation that includes a regex expression that will fail on strings that are pure whitespace or empty (you may be able to include both @NotEmpty and @Pattern and simplify the regex that way). Or write a custom validator as described here.