grails 2.4.2 - timepoint of validation of domain object - validation

I have got a domain class with some custom validators like the following:
class Domain {
String attribute1
OtherDomain attribute2
static constraints = {
attribute2 nullable: true, validator: {OtherDomain od, Domain d ->
if (od) {
log.debug "entering validation"
// certain validation here
}
}
}
For updating I have got a simple action in the corresponding DomainController:
#Transactional
def update(Domain domainInstance) {
log.debug "entering update()"
// rest of update
}
I'm wondering why in my debuglog I get the debug messages in the following order:
entering validation
entering update()
The problem is that the validation fails at this point (StackOverflowError). I know the reason for this error and I know what to do to circumvent this error (doing so within update action). However, I don't know why there is a validation before the programme even gets into the update() action. And I don't know how to prevent a validation at this point.
Do you have any suggestions?

The reason you see the "entering validation" message before "entering update()" is because you have declared a command object of type Domain. This means that Grails will bind any request parameters to domainInstance and then call validate() on it, before the action is executed. This allows you to write code like this:
#Transactional
def update(Domain domainInstance) {
// at this point request params have been bound and validate() has
// been executed, so any validation errors will be available in
// domainInstance.errors
if (domainInstance.hasErrors() {
// do something
}
log.debug "entering update()"
}

Related

How to make my validator conditional based upon SSJS check (Xpages)?

I have a function to call which component on my XPage performs a submit to the server:
//Used to check which if a component triggered an update
function submittedBy( componentId ){
try {
var eventHandlerClientId = param.get( '$$xspsubmitid' );
var eventHandlerId = #RightBack( eventHandlerClientId, ':' );
var eventHandler = getComponent( eventHandlerId );
if( !eventHandler ){
return false;
}
var parentComponent = eventHandler.getParent();
if( !parentComponent ){
return false;
}
return ( parentComponent.getId() === componentId );
} catch( e ){ /*Debug.logException( e );*/ }
}
I have a validator which is called normally via expression language:
validator="#{applicationValidators.valPhone}"
I would like to make the validator conditioned by a check if the submit is done by the element/component with the btnSave id on it e.g.
<xp:this.validator><![CDATA[#{javascript:if (submittedBy('btnSave')){
return applicationValidators.valPhone();
}}]]></xp:this.validator>
but the valPhone funktion expects some inputs which are injected automatically if I call the method via EL:
public void valPhone(FacesContext facesContext, UIComponent component, Object value)
Is there a way to include the submittedBy function in the EL or must I supply the objects when calling the function in SSJS cause for now I get the error message:
Error while executing JavaScript action expression Script interpreter
error, line=2, col=38: Java method 'valPhone()' on java class
'org.acme.projectx.test.ApplicationValidators' not found
When I apply the objects e.g.
applicationValidators.valPhone(facesContext,getComponent("inpPhone"),getComponent("inpPhone").getValue());
it does run the validator method but does not seem to know how to handle the response (in my case I throw a ValidatorExeption with a message.
Error while executing JavaScript action expression Script interpreter
error, line=4, col=31: Error calling method
'valPhone(com.ibm.xsp.domino.context.DominoFacesContext,
com.ibm.xsp.component.xp.XspInputText, java.lang.String)' on java
class 'org.acme.projectx.test.ApplicationValidators' Phone is not
valid
Phone is not valid is the string message that I included in the FacesMessagge that I throw in the ValidatorExeption.
I'd take a totally different approach:
create a page controller class
call a method in the controller when the button is clicked
do your validation based on your value(s) in that method
if validation fails create a message in the validation error stack
I don't have a reference right now but this would be much easier to program and control in general.

What to use instead of Exceptions when writing validation code?

I am writing some validation code and am not sure how to pass validation messages back to the calling code.
Exceptions come to mind, but I think that Exceptions should not be used in user input validation. As #Blowdart puts it:
Exceptions are not
control flow mechanisms. Users often get passwords wrong, it's not an
exceptional case. Exceptions should be a truly rare thing,
UserHasDiedAtKeyboard type situations.
From: https://stackoverflow.com/a/77175/125938. I'm extending that sentiment to all "incorrect" user input that a user might enter.
So the question is what to use instead of Exceptions. For certain situations, I could just use an IsValid… method that returns a bool for validity, but what if I want to pass an error message back with it? Should I create a custom "ValidationError" object, with a Message property? What makes sense and causes Least Astonishment (preferably a tried and tested pattern)?
If I were to do this in a truly object-oriented way, I'd adhere to the separation of concerns principle and compose a chain of classes that each deal with a separate step on the input - validation - output journey.
Let's say we are parsing a date from string as entered by the user.
My first class would encapsulate the raw value and attempt to parse the date (pseudo-code):
class TextualDate {
public TextualDate(string value) {
// just initialize with the provided value
}
public Option<Date> AsDate() {
// try parsing and either return the date or not
// the Option<Date> type is here to suggest that the conversion might not succeed
}
}
Next I'd have a validation class that instantiates the TextualDate class, invokes its AsDate() method and returns the validation result:
class ValidatedDate {
public ValidatedDate(TextualDate value) {
// initialize with the provided value
_textualDate = value;
}
private TextualDate _textualDate;
public ValidationResult Validated {
var maybeDate = _textualDate.AsDate();
// see whether we have a date or not
return new ValidationResult(...);
}
}
In our ValidationResult class, we might find some status property (OK, Failed), any error message either provided directly or as a key to then look-up in a message catalog etc.
This way, we can isolate concerns and only deal with the error messages on the UI layer while being able to use and reuse the validation logic independently.
I was faced with a similar dilemma in the past - I had to write a couple of services that takes data from a 3rd party, manipulating it in various ways, and send that data to other services for further processing.
All of these services might have failed because of wrong or incomplete data, but it was nor unexpected neither exceptional - and I refused to use exceptions for these cases.
I've done an extensive research, reading anything I could get my hands on in this subject in two days, and finally decided the following:
A method might need to return data and might not (sub in Visual Basic, void in Java/C#) - but in both cases, I wanted an indication for success/fail and a potential error message.
If your language of choice supports tuples, you could return a tuple from your methods:
public (bool Success, string ErrorMessage) DoSomething()
{
// implementation here
}
or
public (bool Success, someType Value, string ErrorMessage) DoSomething()
{
// implementation here
}
If not, you can do what I did (That was c#5 - so no value tuples) and create a result class:
public class Result
{
public static Result Success()
{
return new Result(true, null);
}
public static Result Fail(string errorMessage)
{
return new Result(false, errorMessage);
}
protected Result(bool success, string errorMessage)
{
Success = success;
ErrorMessage = errorMessage;
}
public bool Success {get; private set;}
public string ErrorMessage {get; private set;}
}
public class Result<T>
{
public static Result<T> Success(T value)
{
return new Result(true, null, value);
}
public new static Result<T> Fail(string errorMessage)
{
return new Result(false, errorMessage, default(T));
}
private Result<T>(bool success, string errorMessage, T value)
: base(success, errorMessage)
{
Value = value;
}
public T Value {get; private set;}
}
And use it like this:
public Result CouldBeVoid()
{
bool IsOk;
// implementation
return IsOk ?
Result.Success() :
Result.Fail("Something went wrong") ;
}
public Result<int> CouldBeInt()
{
bool IsOk;
// implementation
return IsOk ?
Result.Success(intValue) :
Result.Fail("Something went wrong") ;
}
var result = CouldBeVoid();
if(!result)
// do something with error message
var result = CouldBeInt()
if(result)
// do something with int value
else
// do something with error message
Users often get passwords wrong, it's not an exceptional case.
Yes and no. Whether to throw an exception or not depends on the question you're asking. And in the course of logging a user in, there are typically quite a number of questions being asked before you come to the conclusion whether the user can be logged in or not. The more you break down your code into specialised parts, the more it may make sense to raise exceptions in some of those parts.
Say you specify your login procedure the following way in an HTTP context:
Get the username* and password* from the request.
Fetch the user record* by its username from the database*.
Check whether the record's password* equals* the entered password.
If yes, start a session.
If any of the above steps do not successfully complete, output an appropriate error message.
Any of the items marked with an asterisk above may fail:
The request may not contain a username or password.
There may not be a user record for this username, or the database may be down.
For whatever reason, the record may not have a password and/or be corrupted. The stored password may, for whatever reason, use an unsupported hashing algorithm and hence can't be compared.
It should be rather obvious that in this process there are any number of cases that would be ideal to be implemented as an exception. The actual function which tests the password should probably not throw an exception in case the password is merely false; that should be a boolean return value. But it may still throw an exception for any other number of reasons. If you use exceptions properly, you'll end up with code that looks something like this (pseudo-pseudo code):
try {
username = request.get('username')
password = request.get('password')
user = db.get(username=username)
if (user.password.matches(password)) {
session.start()
} else {
print 'Nope, try again'
}
} catch (RequestDoesNotHaveThisDataException) {
logger.info('Invalid request')
response.status(400)
} catch (UserRecordNotFoundException) {
print 'Nope, try again'
} catch (UnsupportedHashingAlgorithmException, PasswordIsNullException) {
logger.error('Invalid password hash for user ' + user.id)
response.status(500)
print 'Sorry, please contact our support staff'
} catch (DatabaseDownException e) {
// mostly for illustration purposes,
// this exception should probably not even be caught here
logger.exception('SEND HALP!')
throw e
}
So, yes, this is a very simple process, but literally every step along the way has one or more exceptional cases. You ask the question "what is the username the user sent in the request?", and if there's no answer to this question because the user didn't sent any username, you have an exceptional case. Exceptions simplify control flow here a lot as opposed to trying to cover each of these cases with an if..else.
It is NOT an exception if the username is not valid or the password is not correct.
(From the answer you quote from.)
As you can see, we're testing whether the username is "valid" or not by trying to fetch its record from the database. If we have a function whose purpose is to fetch records of users from the database, and there is no such record, then an exception is an entirely valid response. If we defined that function to test whether such a record exists and null or false is a valid return value… fine. But in this case we didn't write it that way, and frankly, that results in simpler control flow I find.
Now, only the password validation itself does not use an exception, since the question asked there is "does this password match that password?", to which the answer can clearly be yes or no. Again, only if something exceptional like an unsupported hashing algorithm turns up can there be no answer to this question and an exception is entirely warranted.
Having said all this, you may notice that most of these cases, except the really fatal one with the database, does not outwardly result in an exception. The component here is expecting and handling certain cases that its sub-components regard as exceptional. This code here is asking the questions, and is prepared to handle Mu as an answer for some of them. Which is to say, a general rule that says "exceptions shouldn't be used in process X, Y or Z because it's not exceptional enough" is too dogmatic. It depends on the purpose of each individual piece of code whether an exception is warranted or not.
Having said all this, what you're asking about is some sort of form validation. The above code shows a case where two pieces of data may each be invalid, and it's using exceptions to in the end still result in a "yes" or "no" response. You can of course encapsulate that in an object like this:
val = new LoginFormValidator()
val.setDataFromRequest(request)
val.validate()
if (val.isValid) {
print 'Hurray'
} else {
print 'You have errors:'
for (error in val.errors) {
print error.fieldName + ': ' + error.reason
}
}
Whether this validator uses exceptions internally for any of this you do not need to care, but in the end it saves all of them as a "yes" or "no" result to its internal properties, from where you can take them either as an aggregate (val.isValid) or individually (for (error in val.errors)).

Ember-validation how to implement lazy validation

I am using ember-cli:2.5.0 and ember-validations:v2.0.0-alpha.5
In my ember-component i have a validation which is running automatically for each change in a attribute but i want to run this validation only if i call "validate()" method in technical term call validation lazily.
Please find the below code samples,
import Ember from 'ember';
import EmberValidations, { validator } from 'ember-validations';
export default Ember.Component.extend(EmberValidations, {
didReceiveAttrs() {
this.set('newBook', this._bookModel().create());
},
_bookModel(data = {}) {
return Ember.Object.extend(EmberValidations, {
bookVersion: null,
isEditable: false,
validationActive: false,
validations: {
bookVersion: {
inline: validator(function() {
if(this.validationActive){ //Here this.validationActive always return undefined
var version = this.model.get('bookVersion') || "",
message = [];
if (Ember.isEmpty(bookVersion)) {
message.push("Book Version is mandatory!!!");
}
if (message.length > 0) {
return message.join(',');
}
}
})
}
}
}, data);
}
});
actions: {
this.get('newBook').set("validationActive",true);
this.get('newBook').validate().then(() => {
//Do the action
}
}
I want the above validation to run only calling "this.get('newBook').validate()". I am entirely new to ember so down-voter please put your comments before down-voting for others kindly let me know for any more code samples.
Your help should be appreciable.
The addon you are using for validations ("ember-validations") is a very popular one and its documentation is pretty well when compared to others. If you look at the documentation there is a part named "Conditional Validators" in documentation. You can use a boolean property to control when the validation is to be performed.
You can see an illustration of what I mean in the following twiddle. I have created a simple validation within the application controller for user's name. The name field must have a length of at least 5 and the validation is to be performed only if the condition validationActive is true. Initially; the condition is false; which means validator did not work and isValid property of Controller (which is inherited from EmberValidations Mixin) is true. If you toggle the property with the button provided; the validation will run (since the condition is now set to true; hence validation is triggered) and isValid will return to false. If you change the value; the validation result will change appropriately with respect to the value of user's name. If you toggle the condition once again to set it to false; then isValid will become true no matter what the valie of user's name is.
I hope this gives you an insight about how to control when your validations should work.
Here is what you should do after your edit: The field is undefined because you are trying to reach component's own validationActive field within inline validator. Please get validationActive as follows this.model.get('validationActive') and give a try. It should work.

I18n in service layer

My project use struts2 and spring, I have some service method to deal with business logic.
e.g
public void aMethod(){
if(!validate()) return;
process();
}
private boolean validate() {
return validateA()&&validateB()&&validateB();
}
But when I call in action (Controller) layer, I found that no error message show in page.
So I change my method to blow:
public String validate() {
if (!validateA()) {
return "error.msg.A";
} else if (!validateB()) {
return "error.msg.B";
}
return null;
}
Action layer call validate method directly and get the error message to process i18n related work.
My question is that:
Any best practices for i18n in service layer?
My validate method is very strange in service layer after my change. Any good way to show i18n error message and also keep service layer clear?
What I usually do is to have custom exceptions that have a key and message attributes.
The key is the i18n key for that error, and the message is a default message.
So in the service:
try{
some code
}
catch(SomeException e){
handleAppropriatly;
throw new MyCustomException("error.foo","Some default message",e);
}
The action catches the message and adds it to the correct place appropriately (addActionError/addFieldError) using the key, allowing you to take advantage of any internationalisation you have.

Should required preconditions for a method be verified by the method or the calling code?

To use a made up example, suppose I have a form.submit() method and I want to validate the form before submission. Should the validation go inside the method or outside of it in the calling code?
If I put the validation inside the method then I can be assured that it is always checked and not worry about someone calling the method without the conditions being met. However, for someone reading the calling code, it may not be obvious that the validation is happening, leading them to checking it twice by adding their own checks in the calling code. If all they see is form.submit() in the calling code, they may not realize it's doing the validation, leading them to duplicate it in the calling code by adding if-conditions surrounding the method call.
What is the proper way to handle this?
public void submit() {
if(this.isValid()) {
// do submission
}
}
...
form.submit();
OR
public void submit() {
// do submission
}
...
if(form.isValid())
form.submit();
public void validateAndSubmit() {
if(this.isValid()) {
this.submitWhenValid()
}
}
public void submitWhenValid() {
// do submission
}
...
form.validateAndSubmit();

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