Vaadin Bean validation for table - vaadin

Question

When I enter edit mode of my Table, I want to have data validation on all fields in that Table.
First, a couple of notes:
I'm using Vaadin 7, so the Bean Validation addon sadly won't work.
I know the implementation of JSR-303 works, because I tried adding a BeanValidator to a TextField without issues.
Now, I have a perfectly working table for which I am using a BeanItemContainer to keep my Person beans inside.
The Person bean looks as follows:
public class Person {
#Size(min = 5, max = 50)
private String firstName;
#Size(min = 5, max = 50)
private String lastName;
#Min(0)
#Max(2000)
private int description;
... getters + setters...
}
Person beans are added to the BeanItemContainer, which in turn is set to the container data source with setContainerDataSource()
The BeanValidator was added to the table like so:
table.addValidator(new BeanValidator(Person.class, "firstName"));
When I run the application, I have two problems:
When I run the application, the table shows up as intended. However, when I edit the fields and set one of the firstName fields to, say, "abc" - no validation error is shown and the value is accepted
How am I supposed to get BeanValidator to work on all of my tables fields?
When I use table.setSelectable(true) or table.setMultiSelect(true), I get this error:
com.vaadin.server.ServiceException:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: [] is not a valid value for
property firstName of type class
com.some.path.vaadinpoc.sampleapp.web.Person
How am I supposed to get BeanValidator to work with Selectable/MultiSelect?
Please advice
Thanks!

Answer 1

You'll need to add the validators to the editable fields themselves, not to the table. (Table itself is a field => the Validator from table.addValidator validates the value of the Table => the value of the table is the selected itemId(s) => the BeanValidator fails)
You can add the validators to the fields that by using a custom TableFieldFactory on the table. Here's a very simple one-off example for this scenario - clearly, if you need to do this with a lot of different beans/tables, it'll be worth creating a more generic/customizable factory
table.setTableFieldFactory(new DefaultFieldFactory() {
#Override
public Field<?> createField(Item item, Object propertyId, Component uiContext) {
Field<?> field = super.createField(item, propertyId, uiContext);
if (propertyId.equals("firstName")) {
field.addValidator(new BeanValidator(Person.class, "firstName"));
}
if (propertyId.equals("lastName")) {
field.addValidator(new BeanValidator(Person.class, "lastName"));
}
if (propertyId.equals("description")) {
field.addValidator(new BeanValidator(Person.class, "description"));
}
return field;
}