Ignore play framework form errors at different views - forms

Question

i'd like to know whether I could ignore play standard validation when I want to. For instance, let's imagine I have a Entity called Car just like
#Entity
public class Car{
#Id
private Long id;
#Required
private String model;
#Required
private String hiddenField; //important but doesn't appear in some cases (some usecases)
}
In order to make it clearer, then
Case 1
#(carForm : Form[Car])
#import helper._
#form(routes.controller.foo.bar) {
#inputText(carForm("model"))
<input type="submit">
}
Case 2
#(carForm : Form[Car])
#import helper._
#form(routes.controller.foo.bar) {
#inputText(carForm("model"))
#inputText(carForm("hiddenField"))
<input type="submit">
}
Then I have a Play.data.Form object, and it has errors cause i haven't filled model or the hiddenField that was given as exmple. But, actually, i have some situations that this hidden doesn't even appear (case 1), i mean, there's no input called that, as the user is not allowed to edit it that time. So, if I have two usecases, where at the first, all inputs are there and they are supposed to be filled, but the other one has no 'hiddenField' input, but, altought, it's still required by my model, and, of course, a form submitted without it has error as well, what should I do?. How was I supposed to deal with it? I have one model, but validation may be different in one case to another, and i wanna it to be server side, not jquery nor pure javascript.
I tried to discardErrors through
(Imagine it was submitted from case 1)
MyForm<Car> myCarForm = Form.form(Car.class).bindFromRequest();
//it has errors, sure it does, hiddenField was required and that field didn't even exist at screen.
myCarForm.discardErrors(); //ok, error hashmap is empty right now
myCarForm.get(); // anyway, no value here.
//myCarForm.data(); //for sure i could retrieve field by field and remount object that way, but that looks hacky and hardworking
Then, any solution? Thank u all

Answer 1

I got it reading Play for Java book.
6.4.2 Partial Validation
A common use case is having multiple validation constraints for the same object
model. Because we’re defining our constraint on the object model, it’s normal to have
multiple forms that refer to the same object model. But these forms might have different
validation constraints. To illustrate this use case, we can imagine a simple wizard in
which the user inputs a new product in two steps:
1 The user enters the product name and submits the form.
2 The user enters the product EAN number and the description.
We could validate the product’s name during step 2, but displaying an error message
for the product name at that point would be weird. Fortunately, Play allows you to perform
partial validation. For each annotated value, we need to indicate at which step it
applies. We can do that with the help of the groups attribute from our annotations.
Let’s change our Product model class to do that:
public Product extends Model {
public interface Step1{}
public interface Step2{}
#Required(groups = Step1.class)
public String name;
#Required(groups = Step2.class)
public String ean;
}
Then, at Controller
// We re//strict the validation to the Step1 "group"
Form<Product> productForm =
form(Product.class, Product.Step1.class).bindFromRequest();
Thanks!

Answer 2

Yes you can achieve the solution to this problem. what's happening in this case is every time you map your request to model car it will always look for JPA validations for every property then it looks for validate() method present inside that model, if that method returns null then it doesn't pass any error and perform the normal execution, but if it returns any thing then it maps it to form errors.
You can return error mapping to specific field or you can just return a string that will be considered as a global error.
In your case solution is :
#Entity
public class Car{
#Id
private Long id;
private String model;
private String hiddenField; //important but doesn't appear in some cases (some usecases)
public List<ValidationError> validate() {
List<ValidationError> errors = new ArrayList<ValidationError>();
.
.
.
#Some logic to validate fields#
#if field invalid#
errors.add(new ValidationError("model", "errorMessage"));
.
.
.
return errors.isEmpty() ? null : errors;
}
Note: Just remove the JPA validation and use your logic in validate function to check according to the situation.

Answer 3

Ignores validations, like this:
myCarForm.discardErrors().get();
and does the validation otherwise, Jquery for example.