using spring validation on request headers

Question

Is it possible to use the spring validation framework with Spring MVC to validate the presence/absence and value of an HTTP request header?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I don't see how this would be possible, since the validation framework only operates on your domain objects, not on the HTTP request itself. Specifically, the Validator interface doesn't specify any methods that take the HttpServletRequest object, which is what you'd need to have access to in order to grab the headers and test them.

Using the validation framework feels like the wrong solution to whatever problem you're trying to solve, especially since it's hard to know how there'd be a unique HTTP request header for a given form submission. Are you looking to test for an HTTP header that should always be present in requests to your app? Then you might want to consider implementing a HandlerInterceptor, which will intercept and process all requests to pages that you've mapped in any HanderMappings. Are you looking to test for an HTTP header that should always be present in any page view of your app? Then you'd want to implement a Filter, which operates outside of the context of Spring MVC.