Spring REST @RequestBody validation in specific order and only one of group mandatory fields

Question

Lets say, I have below bean that I get in my Controller's entry method using @RequestBody

public class MyRequestBean extends RequestBean {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    private String lastName ;
    private String firstName ;
    private String ssnNumber;
    private String groupCd;

}

I have put @Valid at entry point method beside - @RequestBody.

I am trying to achieve two things,

1. ssnNumber is an absolute mandatory field - if its empty or null - no need to validate anything else. Just return the error message.

2. If ssnNumber is valid , see if any of the three fields - firstName, lastName and groupCd are valid with @NotNull & @NotEmpty . If any of the fields are present, handle the request.

How can I achieve this?

I am using these two dependencies for validation purpose ,

<dependency>
            <groupId>javax.validation</groupId>
            <artifactId>validation-api</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
</dependency>

Validation API is - 1.1.0.Final & Hibernate Validator is - 5.3.4.Final

EDIT: Possible duplicate link is talking about JSON field order. In my case, field order doesn't matter. Its about field validation order. Am I missing something?

Answer 1

I didn't found a way to do it with annotations i.e. order field validations with annotations.

I had to eventually write my custom validator class- MyValidator by implementing - org.springframework.validation.Validator and writing my ordered logic there and then adding that validator for that controller in controller class,

@InitBinder
    public void globalInitBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
        binder.addValidators(new MyValidator());
    }