Moving along towards a 5.2 Final, we are happy to announce the release of Hibernate Validator 5.2.0.CR1. The main goal of this release was to fix bugs and polish some of the new features. For example, we reviewed the Optional validation support and made sure its behavior is (what we think) consistent in all cases. You can find the full change log on JIRA.
Despite the focus on bug fixes, we still managed to sneak in a couple of new features. Hibernate Validator offers now a TimeProvider contract, as well as an extension of the Path API which allows to obtain the value of the represented property. Refer to the online documentation for more information.
Another more general question, which created quite a bit of discussion, revolved around the validation of Java 8 date/time types (JSR 310) (see HV-874). The question is, whether we can/should provide default ConstraintValidator implementations for @Past and @Future validating LocalDate (or any of the other date/time types which do not represent a instant in time). The Javadocs tells us:
This class does not store or represent a time or time-zone. Instead, it is a description of the date, as used for birthdays. It cannot represent an instant on the time-line without additional information such as an offset or time-zone.
Without a instant in time, however, past and future are undefined. One can only validate such an instant by associating a timezone with it. But which one? The time zone of the current JVM? That could lead to unexpected behavior for example in client-server applications. If you have an opinion on this or an idea on how to solve this, please leave a comment or use any of the other means listed below to get into touch with us. We would love to hear from you. For now, Hibernate Validator will not support LocalDate out of the box. We will see how this pans out.
Where do I get the release?
Maven artifacts can be found in the JBoss Maven repository (GAV org.hibernate:hibernate-validator:5.2.0.CR1) and will within a short time also be synced to Maven Central. Distribution bundles are as usual available on SourceForge.
Feedback and questions are welcome via the Hibernate Validator forum or on stackoverflow using the hibernate-validator tag.
Enjoy!
