Unable to validate minlength

[Luke Zechariah]

In struts-validation, I am able to validate for "required" field on client side as well as server side. But if I want the field to be validated for a "minlength", I am unable to do it.

It is giving me an error, when validating for minlength:

Title Size can not be less than null characters.

Following is my .properties file:

  
titleSize.param=Title Size
errors.minlength={0} can not be less than {1} characters.
errors.required=Please enter some {0}.

 
validation.xml
 
 <formset>
        <!-- An example form -->
        <form name="FormatFormBean">
            <field
                property="titleSize"
                depends="required, minlength">
                    <arg0 key="titleSize.param"/>
                    <arg1 name="minlen" key="${var:minlen}" resource="false" />
                    
                    <var>
                    <var-name>minlen</var-name>
                    <var-value>3</var-value>
                    </var>
            </field>
         </form>
   </formset>

 
validation-rules.xml
 
<form-validation>
 
   <global>
 
      <validator name="required"
            classname="org.apache.struts.validator.FieldChecks"
               method="validateRequired"
         methodParams="java.lang.Object,
                       org.apache.commons.validator.ValidatorAction,
                       org.apache.commons.validator.Field,
                       org.apache.struts.action.ActionMessages,
                       javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest"
                  msg="errors.required"/>
<validator name="minlength"
            classname="org.apache.struts.validator.FieldChecks"
               method="validateMinLength"
         methodParams="java.lang.Object,
                       org.apache.commons.validator.ValidatorAction,
                       org.apache.commons.validator.Field,
                       org.apache.struts.action.ActionMessages,
                       javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest"
              depends="required"
                  msg="errors.minlength" jsFunction= "org.apache.commons.validator.javascript.validateMinLength"/>
   </global>
 
</form-validation>
 

Does anybody knows the answer for this. Thank you very much in advance.

Lk.

[Luke Zechariah]

I found the answer to this, the dtd to which the validation.xml and validation-rules.xml were pointing is a previous version. So just changed and it validates if the field is less than 3 characters.

But now I have got another error:
Now even if I enter 4 or more characters still I am getting the same error:
"Title Size can not be less than 3 characters."

Does anyone has any ideas abt this? Thanks for your time.

[Ergin Er]

Are you sure you got the name of the variable right?
You define that a field needs to match 2 variables: required,minlength. Then you define a minlen?

[Luke Zechariah]

Ergin,

Thanks for the reply. What you said was correct, the var:minlen is wrong, I defined it as var:minlength and its working.

But I have another problem now: I wanted to implement my own custom minlength validation as follows:

So I named it as "var:minfldlength", it is validating properly. But it was always gives the output as

"Title Size can not be less than null characters"

I do not know and I have tried all my best still the "null" is not taking the value "3" or whatever is used. But if I enter more than 3 chars, it validates properly and does not show any error.

See the code:

 
validation.xml
 
<formset>
        <!-- An example form -->
        <form name="FormatFormBean">
            <field
                property="titleSize" depends="required, minfldlength">
                    <arg key="titleSize.name" position="0"/>
                    <arg name="minlength" key="${var:minfldlength}" position="1" resource="false"/>  
            <var>
            <var-name>minfldlength</var-name>
            <var-value>7</var-value>
            </var>
     </field>

        </form>
</formset>
 

It is able to identify {0} from the properties file but not {1}. I do not know why.
I also tried using

 
<arg0 key="titleSize.name"/>
<arg1 name="minlength" key="${var:minfldlength}" resource="false"/>  

still does not work.

This is the validation-rules.xml

 
  <validator name="minfldlength"
  classname="coreservlets.Testing"
      method="MinFldLength"
          methodParams="java.lang.Object,
                       org.apache.commons.validator.ValidatorAction,
                       org.apache.commons.validator.Field,
                       org.apache.struts.action.ActionMessages,
                       javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest"
               depends=""
                   msg="errors.minlength" >
 

The version of dtd I am using is validator_1_1_3.dtd

The custom Code for MinFldLength is as follows:

 
     public static boolean MinFldLength(Object bean,
                                             ValidatorAction va, Field field,
                                             ActionMessages errors,
                                             HttpServletRequest request) {
 
         String value = null;
         if (isString(bean)) {
             value = (String) bean;
         } else {
             value = ValidatorUtils.getValueAsString(bean, field.getProperty());
         }
 System.out.println("value: "+value+" "+GenericValidator.isBlankOrNull(value));
         if (!GenericValidator.isBlankOrNull(value)) {
System.out.println("this is accessed1");
             try {
System.out.println("this is accessed2 "+field.getVarValue("minfldlength"));
                 int min = Integer.parseInt(field.getVarValue("minfldlength"));
System.out.println("this is accessed3");
System.out.println("min: "+min);
System.out.println("this is accessed4 "+GenericValidator.minLength(value, min));
                 if (!GenericValidator.minLength(value, min)) {
                     errors.add(field.getKey(), Resources.getActionMessage(request, va, field));
System.out.println("Loop 1 accessed "+field.getKey()
+"fd: "+field
+"va: "+va
+"req: "+request);
                     return false;
                 }
             } catch (Exception e) {
                 errors.add(field.getKey(), Resources.getActionMessage(request, va, field));
System.out.println("Loop 2 accessed");
                 return false;
             }
         }
 
         return true;
     }
 
protected static boolean isString(Object o) {
         return (o == null) ? true : String.class.isInstance(o);
    }

I do not know where the catch no matter how many ever times I try it gives my the same error:
TITLE SZE can not be less than null characters

Praise the Lord, finally just now as I was writing to this forum, I got this idea and that solved my puzzle:
In the validation-rules: I forgot to put this attribute in "validator" node:

jsFunctionName="org.apache.commons.validator.javascript.validateMinLength"

Now I ran it and its working awesome.

Thanks for all the suggestions,
Lk.