Validator with annotations

Question

I have some doubt about how to use validation annotation. I'm changing my code to make it more readable and maintainable.

I started from an action where I had all setters with annotation and i put data in a private local variable

ex.
private String email;

@RequiredStringValidator(key="fieldError.required", message = "*")
 @EmailValidator (key="fieldError.emailFormat", message="*")
public void setEmail(String email) {
 this.email = email;
}

It functioned well but I neeed to reorganize my code. So, I create e class User where I directly put data coming from the web and I erase all the private variable in this way

User user = null;
 public User getUser() {
if (user == null)
user = new User();
 return user;
}

@RequiredStringValidator(key="fieldError.required", message = "*")
 @EmailValidator (key="fieldError.emailFormat", message="*")
public void setEmail(String email) {
 getUser().setEmail(email);
}

My bean receives data but validators stop to function, so I receive bad validation messages. Does validator need a getter (not present also in the first release) or use reflection on local variables to check data? How can I implement my new data model in Struts2

Answer 1

have a look at VisitorFieldValidator [1] [2] and model driven. IMO it's better to keep the annotations inside the action rather than the bean (you can have different use cases for the same model).

[1] http://struts.apache.org/release/2.3.x/docs/visitorfieldvalidator-annotation.html
[2] http://struts.apache.org/release/2.2.x/docs/using-visitor-field-validator.html