Hibernate validator #NotEmpty not working spring boot and jackson - spring-mvc

Question

I have the following class which has errorRequests with #NotEmpty annotation.
public class ErrorsRequests implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = -727308651190295062L;
private String applicationName;
#NotEmpty
#Valid
#JsonProperty("errors")
private List<ErrorsRequest> errorRequests;
My Controller looks like the following:
#Autowired
#Qualifier("errorStreamValidator")
private Validator errorStreamValidator;
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST, produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE,
consumes = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
public ResponseEntity<Void> errorReporting(#NotNull #PathVariable String applicationName,
#Valid #NotNull #RequestBody ErrorsRequests errorsRequests, BindingResult results) {
I have the required hibernate validator classes in my classpath.
When I input the following JSON :
{
"errorss": [
]
}
The #NotEmpty validation is not kicked off at all. Hibernate validation only works if the json has errors element in it as below
{
"errors": [
]
}
Can I make the first case also work ?

Answer 1

You are using the annotations in the wrong way and your controller is also missing an annotation.
You should annotate your controller with #Validated:
#Validated
#RestController
#RequestMapping("/mycontroller")
public class MyController { ... }
And in your model class you need to place the annotations like this:
#NotEmpty
private List<#Valid Foo> foo;
The #Valid annotation will check if the items inside the list are also valid.

Answer 2

Check that you have included this dependency in pom.xml
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-validation</artifactId>
</dependency>