Struts 2 Validation

[Bejoy Kaladhar]

Hello experts,
I'm am stuck with a issue in struts 2 validation can you please help me sort out this.I had implemented client side validation on struts 2 and i am successful in using validators as required,requiredString,stringLength but now facing 2 basic issues now

1.I'm not able to use the expression validator
2.i need to check first whether a text box is empty or not if empty it should give a validation message also if it contains any value other than integer then also it should give a message

My code snippets are here
Struts.xml

<action name="carClubSave" class="com.trivand.apps.autos.action.CarClubAction" method="save">
<interceptor-ref name="validation"/>
<interceptor-ref name="fileUpload"/>
<interceptor-ref name="token"/>
    <interceptor-ref name="basicStack"/>
    <exception-mapping exception="java.lang.Exception" result="exception"/>
    <result name="invalid.token" type="tiles">autos.carclub.home</result>     
<result name="success" type="tiles">autos.carclub.home</result>
</action>

this is my validation xml file CarClubAction-carClubSave-validation.xml

<!DOCTYPE validators PUBLIC
"-//OpenSymphony Group//XWork Validator 1.0.2//EN"
"http://www.opensymphony.com/xwork/xwork-validator-1.0.2.dtd">
<validators>
    <field name="nameTextField">
        <field-validator type="requiredstring" short-circuit="true">
            <message>Club name is required!</message>
        </field-validator>
        <field-validator type="stringlength" short-circuit="true">
        <param name="minLength">1</param>
        <param name="maxLength">50</param>
            <message>Club name must be less than 50 characters!</message>
        </field-validator>
    </field>
    <field name="autoCount">
        <field-validator type="required" short-circuit="true">
            <message>Auto Count is required!</message>
        </field-validator>
        <field-validator type="int" short-circuit="true">
        <param name="minLength">1</param>
        <param name="maxLength">500</param>
            <message>Value not in range!</message>
        </field-validator>
    </field>
    <field name="citySelect">
        <field-validator type="expression" >
        <param name="expression">citySelect.equals('Select City')</param>
                <message>City is required!</message>
        </field-validator>
    </field>
    
</validators>

also in my jsp page i've given all my controls within a forma tag as

<s:form theme="css_xhtml" enctype="multipart/form-data" id="addFeaturedAutoForm" action="carClubSave" name="addFeaturedAutoForm" validate="true">
<s:token></s:token>
..................
..................
..................
</s:form>

Any idea what the problem could be?

[Bejoy Kaladhar]

Also i tried a few options for my second issue, using required and int

1.with and without short-circuit="true" in both the validators
2.using requiredString validator instead of required validator

unfortunately even that is not working.

With the expression validator i've tried a few options as

<field name="citySelect">
   <field-validator type="expression" short-circuit="true">
       <param name="expression">[CDATA[((citySelect=='Select City'))]]</param>
       <message>City is required!</message>
    </field-validator>
</field>
 
<field name="citySelect">
   <field-validator type="expression" short-circuit="true">
       <param name="expression">citySelect=='Select City'</param>
       <message>City is required!</message>
    </field-validator>
</field>

Even this is not making any difference.

[David Newton]

The expression validator is not supported on the client side; that would require a clinet-side version of OGNL and access to server-side domain objects. It wouldn't be impossible to implement, but it would take effort.

I have a patch going in to allow manually-configured custom client-side validation that you could use to accomplish this; follow the Struts-user mailing list to see when it goes in--I'm anticipating tomorrow, but it could be as late as Friday. The patch *should* work with earlier versions of Struts 2 as well; assuming it does I'll put it in both the S2.0 and S2.1 branches.

Your second issue is likely to be caused by providing useless parameters to the "int" field-validator; you're giving it "minLength" and "maxLength"--length has no meaning to an integer validation. You need to use the "min" and "max" parameters.

[Nishan Patel]

Hi,


You can use this for expression validation.


<field name="userId">
<field-validator type="stringlength">
<param name="minLength">3</param>
<param name="maxLength">50</param>
<message>
User ID must be between ${minLength} and ${maxLength}.
</message>
</field-validator>
<field-validator type="regex">
<param name="expression">^[0-9a-zA-Z\-._]*$</param>
<message>User Id contains only characters A-Z, a-z, 1-9, ., _, -.</message>
</field-validator>
</field>

For check equality user this :

<validator type="expression">
<param name="expression">
user.password eq confirmPassword
</param>
<message>Confirm password should be same as password.</message>
</validator>

[Bejoy Kaladhar]

hello guys,sorry for a late response.met with an accident tats why.
ok..Nishan i tried the expression validator the way you specified using equals(eq) but sory to ay that the validation is not being performed
i gave it as

<field name="citySelect">
        <field-validator type="expression">
        <param name="expression">citySelect eq cityHidden</param>
            <message>City is required!</message>
        </field-validator>
        
    </field>

the senario is that i'm having a select which contains a list of cities.The first element of the list is "Select City" . I need to validate whether a ciy has been selected or not i mean if the citySelect slect box is having the value "Select City" then the message should be displayed

Initially i tried the expression validaor as

<param name="expression">citySelect eq 'Select City'</param>

<param name="expression">citySelect eq "Select City"</param>

<param name="expression">citySelect eq Select City</param>

but these 3 didn't work so i created text field like this within my form

<s:textfield id="cityHidden" name="cityHidden" value="Select City"/>

and gave the validator expression as

<param name="expression">citySelect eq cityHidden</param>

Unfortunately even that is not working.any thoughts?
[ December 19, 2008: Message edited by: Bejoy KS ]

[Bejoy Kaladhar]

Hello David
It was a typing mistake form my side i had tried the int validation with parameters "min" and "max" only.It is not working with the short-circuit.any intelligent solutions?

[David Newton]

Re: client-side expression validator: nothing you do will make client-side expression validation work. It's not supported.

Re: client-side "int" validation--what exactly isn't working?

[Bejoy Kaladhar]

hi,
I need to check whether a text field is empty or not.If not empty then i need to check whether that it is a number beteen 1 and 10.If empty it should show "Enter a value for field".if Any value other than nos beteen 1 and 10 is entered then it should show "Enter a value between 1 and 10".This is exactly how i need my validation to work. I tried out this as

<field name="seatsAvailabe">        
<field-validator type="required" short-circuit="true">            <message>Seats Availabe is required!</message>       
 </field-validator>        
<field-validator type="int">        
<param name="min">1</param>        
<param name="max">10</param>           
 <message>Seats Availabe should be between ${min} and ${max}!</message>       
 </field-validator>   
 </field>

[David Newton]

When I "what exactly isn't working" I mean "describe the behavior you're seeing, and compare it to the behavior you're expecting".

[Bejoy Kaladhar]

ok David.Sorry for confusing you.
When i validate with the required validator alone i get the validation done
also the validation works fine when i use the int validator alone

But when both are used in the order i mentioned only the required validator works and the int validator doesn't.ie if i dont give any value then it prompts for a value but if i give a string value it accepts it rather than prompting for an int value.This is my short stopper right now.

[deep kathuria]

the correct way is this

use
<field-validator type="fieldexpression"> like this in your example

         <field name="citySelect">  
              <field-validator type="fieldexpression" >  
               <param name="expression">citySelect.equals('Select City')</param>  
                <message>City is required!</message>  
              </field-validator>  
         </field>

or

 <field name="citySelect">  
              <field-validator type="fieldexpression" >  
               <param name="expression">citySelect  eq Select City </param>  
                <message>City is required!</message>  
              </field-validator>  
         </field>

both are working fine.

[url=http://struts.apache.org/2.0.11.2/docs/using-field-validators.html]feild validator[/url]