@NotBlank not recognised in Wildfly/Hibernate

Question

I'm using Wildfly 12.0 and Hibernate and somehow it doesn't recognise @NotBlank. Curiously, it does recognise @NotNull and @Size. As far as I understand, @NotBlank is basically a combination of those two, so this is not a major issue, but I would still like to understand why this is happening.

This is inside my entity:

@Basic
@Column(name = "question")
@NotBlank
private String question;

And this is inside my persistence.xml

<property name="hibernate.archive.autodetection" value="class"/>
<property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true"/>
<property name="hibernate.format_sql" value="true"/>
<property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLInnoDBDialect"/>
<property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.import_files_sql_extractor" value="org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.MultipleLinesSqlCommandExtractor"/>

I get this during deployment:

13:01:27,778 WARN  [org.hibernate.cfg.beanvalidation.TypeSafeActivator] (ServerService Thread Pool -- 142) HHH000274: Unable to apply constraints on DDL for entity.QuestionEntity: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at sun.reflect.annotation.TypeAnnotationParser.mapTypeAnnotations(TypeAnnotationParser.java:356)
    at sun.reflect.annotation.AnnotatedTypeFactory$AnnotatedTypeBaseImpl.<init>(AnnotatedTypeFactory.java:139)
    at sun.reflect.annotation.AnnotatedTypeFactory.buildAnnotatedType(AnnotatedTypeFactory.java:65)
    at sun.reflect.annotation.TypeAnnotationParser.buildAnnotatedType(TypeAnnotationParser.java:79)
    at java.lang.reflect.Field.getAnnotatedType(Field.java:1170)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.TypeAnnotationAwareMetaDataProvider.findTypeAnnotationConstraintsForMember(TypeAnnotationAwareMetaDataProvider.java:65)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.findPropertyMetaData(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:244)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.getFieldMetaData(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:227)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.retrieveBeanConfiguration(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:137)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.getBeanConfiguration(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:125)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.getBeanConfigurationForHierarchy(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:108)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.BeanMetaDataManager.createBeanMetaData(BeanMetaDataManager.java:203)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.BeanMetaDataManager.getOrCreateBeanMetaData(BeanMetaDataManager.java:231)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.BeanMetaDataManager.getBeanMetaData(BeanMetaDataManager.java:178)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.engine.ValidatorImpl.getConstraintsForClass(ValidatorImpl.java:327)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.beanvalidation.TypeSafeActivator.applyDDL(TypeSafeActivator.java:207)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.beanvalidation.TypeSafeActivator.applyRelationalConstraints(TypeSafeActivator.java:191)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.beanvalidation.TypeSafeActivator.applyRelationalConstraints(TypeSafeActivator.java:150)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.beanvalidation.TypeSafeActivator.activate(TypeSafeActivator.java:98)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.beanvalidation.BeanValidationIntegrator.integrate(BeanValidationIntegrator.java:132)
    at org.hibernate.internal.SessionFactoryImpl.<init>(SessionFactoryImpl.java:284)
    at org.hibernate.boot.internal.SessionFactoryBuilderImpl.build(SessionFactoryBuilderImpl.java:422)
    at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.build(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:880)
    at org.jboss.as.jpa.hibernate5.TwoPhaseBootstrapImpl.build(TwoPhaseBootstrapImpl.java:44)
    at org.jboss.as.jpa.service.PersistenceUnitServiceImpl$1$1.run(PersistenceUnitServiceImpl.java:167)
    at org.jboss.as.jpa.service.PersistenceUnitServiceImpl$1$1.run(PersistenceUnitServiceImpl.java:125)
    at org.wildfly.security.manager.WildFlySecurityManager.doChecked(WildFlySecurityManager.java:650)
    at org.jboss.as.jpa.service.PersistenceUnitServiceImpl$1.run(PersistenceUnitServiceImpl.java:209)
    at org.jboss.threads.ContextClassLoaderSavingRunnable.run(ContextClassLoaderSavingRunnable.java:35)
    at org.jboss.threads.EnhancedQueueExecutor.safeRun(EnhancedQueueExecutor.java:1985)
    at org.jboss.threads.EnhancedQueueExecutor$ThreadBody.doRunTask(EnhancedQueueExecutor.java:1487)
    at org.jboss.threads.EnhancedQueueExecutor$ThreadBody.run(EnhancedQueueExecutor.java:1378)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
    at org.jboss.threads.JBossThread.run(JBossThread.java:485)

And this is when I trigger the validation:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at sun.reflect.annotation.TypeAnnotationParser.mapTypeAnnotations(TypeAnnotationParser.java:356)
    at sun.reflect.annotation.AnnotatedTypeFactory$AnnotatedTypeBaseImpl.<init>(AnnotatedTypeFactory.java:139)
    at sun.reflect.annotation.AnnotatedTypeFactory.buildAnnotatedType(AnnotatedTypeFactory.java:65)
    at sun.reflect.annotation.TypeAnnotationParser.buildAnnotatedType(TypeAnnotationParser.java:79)
    at java.lang.reflect.Field.getAnnotatedType(Field.java:1170)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.TypeAnnotationAwareMetaDataProvider.findTypeAnnotationConstraintsForMember(TypeAnnotationAwareMetaDataProvider.java:65)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.findPropertyMetaData(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:244)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.getFieldMetaData(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:227)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.retrieveBeanConfiguration(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:137)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.getBeanConfiguration(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:125)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.provider.AnnotationMetaDataProvider.getBeanConfigurationForHierarchy(AnnotationMetaDataProvider.java:108)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.BeanMetaDataManager.createBeanMetaData(BeanMetaDataManager.java:203)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.BeanMetaDataManager.getOrCreateBeanMetaData(BeanMetaDataManager.java:231)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.metadata.BeanMetaDataManager.isConstrained(BeanMetaDataManager.java:174)
    at org.hibernate.validator.internal.engine.ValidatorImpl.validateValue(ValidatorImpl.java:234)
    at javax.faces.validator.BeanValidator.validate(BeanValidator.java:315)
    at javax.faces.component.UIInput.validateValue(UIInput.java:1166)
    at javax.faces.component.UIInput.validate(UIInput.java:984)
    at javax.faces.component.UIInput.executeValidate(UIInput.java:1250)
    at javax.faces.component.UIInput.processValidators(UIInput.java:714)
    at javax.faces.component.UIForm.processValidators(UIForm.java:253)
    at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase.processValidators(UIComponentBase.java:1261)
    at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase.processValidators(UIComponentBase.java:1261)
    at javax.faces.component.UIViewRoot.processValidators(UIViewRoot.java:1195)
    at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.ProcessValidationsPhase.execute(ProcessValidationsPhase.java:76)
    at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.Phase.doPhase(Phase.java:101)
    at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.execute(LifecycleImpl.java:198)
    at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:658)
    ... 42 more

Answer 1

Which @NotBlank do you use? The one coming from org.hibernate or the one from javax.validation?

If you're not using ee8.preview.mode, the one from javax.validation is not available as it's new in Bean Validation 2.0 and in standard mode WF 12 is using BV 1.1 so you should use the one coming from org.hibernate.

I think it could explain your issue. Anyway, more info about your config and the annotations used will help.

Answer 2

The dependency org.hibernate:hibernate-validator must be included in your dependencies list in Maven or Gradle