Draft Entities with Hibernate Validator

Let's say we want to fire different validation rules, depending on whether a record is a draft or not.

The Entity:

@Entity 
public class BlogPost {

  @Id
  private Long id;

  //always enforce this constraint:
  @NotBlank
  private String title;

  // only enforce this constraint if our validation group is "Publish"
  @NotBlank( groups = { Publish.class } )
  private String body;

  ...getters and setters...
}

//the "Publish" validation group:
public interface Publish extends Default {};

The HTML form (Spring MVC):

...
<form:form>
  <form:label path="title">Title <form:errors path="title"/></form:label>
  <form:input path="title"/>

  <form:label path="body">Body <form:errors path="body"/></form:label>
  <form:textarea path="body"></form:textarea>

  <button type="submit" name="action" value="save-draft">Save Draft</button>
  <button type="submit" name="action" value="publish">Publish</button>

</form:form>
...

The Spring MVC Controller:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/blog-posts")
public class BlogPostController {
 
  /* this method is called if we hit the Save Draft button. It validates the blogPost with the Default group (ignoring the constraint on Body) */

  @RequestMapping( method = RequestMethod.POST, params="action=save-draft" )
  String saveDraft( @Validated BlogPost blogPost, BindingResult result) {
    ...
  }

  /* this method is called if we hit the Publish button. It validates the blogPost with the Publish group, checking the @NotBlank constraint on Body */

  @RequestMapping( method = RequestMethod.POST, params="action=publish" )
  String publish( @Validated({Publish.class}) BlogPost blogPost, BindingResult result)) { 
    ...
  }

}