Hibernate validator NotEmpty trim issue

It appears that the Hibernate NotEmpty annotation does not result in an error for strings filled with whitespace (" "). Only works for nulls or empty strings (ie: new String()). Is there a workaround/fi开发者_开发问答x for this?

@NotEmpty is used to check size rather than contents and applies to Collections as well as Strings. The functionality you're looking for is provided in @NotBlank which is specific to Strings and ignores trailing whitespace.

@NotBlank is the way to test string lengths with an implicit trim call.

Replace your @NotEmpty with a @Pattern annotation that includes a regex expression that will fail on strings that are pure whitespace or empty (you may be able to include both @NotEmpty and @Pattern and simplify the regex that way). Or write a custom validator as described here.