[VALIDATOR-149] required validator doesn't work with String[] (multi-selects)

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 1.1.0 (alpha)

Environment

Operating System: All
Platform: All

• Bugzilla Id: 22121
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: shane
• Created: 05/Aug/03 04:49
• Updated: 12/Nov/07 19:25
• Resolved: 19/Jul/06 13:50

Description

The "required" validator doesn't work for String[] i.e. using multi-select input
types.

I fixed it locally on my machine, though, so here is what I did if you are
interested:

I changed the org.apache.commons.validator.ValidatorUtil.getValueAsString()
method from:

public static String getValueAsString(Object bean, String property) {
Object value = null;

try

{ value = PropertyUtils.getProperty(bean, property); } catch (Exception e) { log.error(e.getMessage(), e); }
return (value != null ? value.toString() : null);
}

to:

public static String getValueAsString(Object bean, String property) {
Object value = null;

try { value = PropertyUtils.getProperty(bean, property); }

catch (Exception e)

{ log.error(e.getMessage(), e); }

//Special case, check if String[]
try
{
String[] valueArray = (String[])value;
if(valueArray==null || valueArray.length==0)

{ value = null; }

}
catch(ClassCastException cce)

{ //Then it wasn't a String[] }

return (value != null ? value.toString() : null);
}

I guess, just to be safe the second catch could catch type Exception instead but
that is up to you.

Anyway, it fixed my validation problem for String[] (multi-selects) and doesn't
appear to have broken and validations which worked before.

To sum up the problem and requested enhancement, I am using Struts (but it would
happen the same way with HTML only) to submit an input of type select and
multiple="true" and the validator framework does not detect if nothing is
selected in that case. I traced down to the getValueAsString() method as the
easiest place to add a fix / change so that the least impact could be made.
Above is the code change I made on my local machine to fix "required" type
validation for a multi-select input.