Bean Validation Groups: When They Help and When They Confuse

Focused guide · Java · Spring Boot

The problem: one DTO, different validation rules

A customer profile may require a name and email during registration. During a partial profile update, the caller may change only a phone number. Teams sometimes add conditional logic to validators or create a pile of nearly identical DTOs to make these flows work.

Bean Validation groups offer another option: constraints can run for different named groups. They are useful when the same object genuinely has multiple validation modes, but they become confusing when groups are used as a substitute for clear request models.

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1. What a group actually does

A constraint belongs to one or more groups. If no group is declared, it belongs to Default. A validation call selects the groups to evaluate.

public interface Create {}
public interface Update {}…