Tapestry5HowToAddValidators

Here is a short description how to add validators to Tapestry 5. In this example a validator is added to check whether the contents of a text field can be parsed as an integer. Changes and corrections welcome.

First define a validation class. This validator does not take an argument (as in min=5 e.g.), so the first template parameter is Void. As no conversion to a specific type of the contents is required, use Object as the second parameter.

The message-key is specified in the constructor, and is validate-int. The name of the validator function is int as specified in the 'addValidation' call in the render method.

A sample class is

public class ValidateInt extends AbstractValidator<Void, Object> {

        public ValidateInt() {
                super(null, Object.class, "validate-int");
        }

        @Override
        public void render(Field field, Void constraintValue,
                        MessageFormatter formatter, MarkupWriter writer,
                        FormSupport formSupport) {
                formSupport.addValidation(field, "int", formatter.format(field.getLabel()), null);
        }

        @Override
        public void validate(Field field, Void constraintValue,
                        MessageFormatter formatter, Object value) throws ValidationException {
                if (value != null) {
                        try {
                                Integer.parseInt(value.toString());
                        } catch (NumberFormatException ex) {
                                throw new ValidationException(formatter.format(field.getLabel()));
                        }
                }
        }

}

Specify the message in a properties file, e.g. org/example/ValidationMessages.properties

validate-int=You must provide a whole number for %s.

These need to be registered in AppModule.java for your application as follows:

        public static void contributeFieldValidatorSource(
                        MappedConfiguration<String, Validator> configuration) {
                configuration.add("int", new ValidateInt());
        }

        public void contributeValidationMessagesSource(
                        OrderedConfiguration<String> configuration) {
                configuration.add("example","org/example/ValidationMessages");
        }

Not done yet, as the javascript to do client-side validation is still required. Create a javascript file validators.js with e.g.

Tapestry.Validator.int = function(field, message) {
        Tapestry.addValidator(field, true, function(value, event) {
                if (isNaN(Number(value)) || value.indexOf(".")!=-1)
                        event.recordError(message);
         });
}

This javascript file needs to be included in all pages/components where the new validator is to be used (Is there a better way?)

Once this is done you can add the validator to your text fields as in

<t:textfield t:id="select" value="selector" validate="required,int,min=0"/>