Bean validation which is disabled in JSF is re-enabled after submit

Question

Given: JSF2 Form with some input fields, including password field.

Main Goal: If the password field is left empty (resulting in password.isEmpty()==true or password==null), the validation and password binding should be skipped!

No-Go: Separate DTO (i know it would be more clean, but i am not allowed to decide this)

view.xhtml:

<h:form id="someForm">
    <h:outputLabel value="Password " />
    <h:inputSecret id="password" value="#{myBackingBean.entity.password}" immediate="true" redisplay="false" required="false">
        <f:validateBean disabled="true"/>
        <f:validator validatorId="myPasswordValidator"/>
    </h:inputSecret>
    <p:message for="password" />
    <p:commandButton value="Save" update="someForm">
        <f:actionListener binding="#{myBackingBean.updateEntityAction()}" />
    </p:commandButton>
</h:form>

MyPasswordValidator.java:

@FacesValidator(value = "myPasswordValidator")
public class MyPasswordValidator implements Validator {
@Override
public void validate(FacesContext context, UIComponent component,
    Object value) throws ValidatorException {
            String password = (String) value;
if (password == null || password.isEmpty()) {
    UIInput inputComponent = ((UIInput) component);
        inputComponent.setValid(true);
        inputComponent.setRequired(false);
}
return;
    }
}

MyBackingBean.java:

@ManagedBean(name = "myBackingBean")
@ViewScoped
public class MyBackingBean extends GenericBackingBean<....> {

    public ActionListener updateEntityAction(){
    return new ActionListener() {
      @Override
      public void processAction(ActionEvent event)
          throws AbortProcessingException {
          // .... hybernate stuff
        }
      };
  }
}

Entity.java:

  class Entity{

  @NotNull
  private String password;
  // ...
  public void setPassword(String password)  {
        // do nothing if null
        if(password == null || password.isEmpty()){

              log.warn("Password not changed for some reason ....");
          return;
        }
        // set and crypt password ...
  }

This actually works, but only for the first submit, each submit after the first results in a error message (no exception ... probably it gets eaten somewhere ... ?). What is interesting, is that the message says "kann nicht null sein'" (german), and i have actually no clue who or what is producing this message.

What i conclude, is that after the first submit the default bean validation is activated again.

Any Idea?

Answer 1

Found a non-hack solution to this problem!

Instead of writing:

<h:inputSecret id="password" value="#{myBackingBean.entity.password}" immediate="true" redisplay="false" required="false">
    <f:validateBean disabled="true"/>
    <f:validator validatorId="myPasswordValidator"/>
</h:inputSecret>

I had to write:

<f:validateBean disabled="true">
<h:inputSecret id="password" value="#{myBackingBean.entity.password}" immediate="true" redisplay="false" required="false">
    <f:validator validatorId="myPasswordValidator"/>
</h:inputSecret>
</f:validateBean>

The First variant does not survive post-requests!

Thanks anyway for the hints and regards!

Answer 2

This message is coming from JSR303 bean validation annotation @NotNull. JSR303 bean validation is by default also executed during JPA EntityManager#persist() and update().

Like as that you can disable JSR303 bean validation in JSF by <f:validateBean disabled="true">, you can disable JSR303 bean validation in JPA by the following entry in persistence.xml:

<validation-mode>none</validation-mode>

Keep in mind that this affects all JSR303 bean validation annotations. You might want to remove the @NotNull and make use of a conditional required="true".

See also:

• Hibernate documentation - Chapter 4.1.2

Answer 3

The message "darf nicht null sein" comes from ValidationMessages_de.properties, you find that one within the JAR hibernate-validator-<version>.jar/org/hibernate/validator.

So you seem right, somewhere the validator strikes back. When rendering this messages via JSF, some message bundle holds

javax.faces.validator.BeanValidator.MESSAGE = {1} {0}

so that the message is like: "password" darf nicht null sein. Either in your project this got changed (look for the key in your message properties) or the validation is possibly started from somewhere else (Hibernate persisting?).