public interface SmartValidator extends Validator
Validator
interface, adding support for
validation 'hints'.void validate(Object target, Errors errors, Object... validationHints)
target
object, which must be of a type of Class
for which the Validator.supports(Class)
method typically returns true
.
The supplied errors
instance can be used to report any
resulting validation errors.
This variant of validate()
supports validation hints, such as
validation groups against a JSR-303 provider (in which case, the provided hint
objects need to be annotation arguments of type Class
).
Note: Validation hints may get ignored by the actual target Validator
,
in which case this method should behave just like its regular
Validator.validate(Object, Errors)
sibling.
target
- the object that is to be validated (can be null
)errors
- contextual state about the validation process (never null
)validationHints
- one or more hint objects to be passed to the validation engineValidationUtils