JPA - No validator could be found for type: enum

Question

I have an entity class which uses an enum type for one of the properties, and I am getting the following exception when I try to persist the entity:

javax.validation.UnexpectedTypeException: No validator could be found for type: model.schema.BaseYesNo

Any idea why this might be happening? My thinking is that since it is an enum, it should already be validated by the compiler, so no need for some kind of validator. (code below)

The entity property:

@Enumerated( EnumType.STRING )
@Column( name = "seeded_flag" )
private BaseYesNo seededFlag;

public BaseYesNo getSeededFlag() {
    return this.seededFlag;
}

public void setSeededFlag( BaseYesNo seededFlag ) {
    this.seededFlag = seededFlag;
}

And the definition of the enum type:

public enum BaseYesNo {
    YES( "Y" ),
    NO( "N" );

    private String yesNoVal;

    private static Map< String, BaseYesNo > stringToEnum = new HashMap< String, BaseYesNo >();

    static {
            for ( BaseYesNo byn : BaseYesNo.values() ) {
            BaseYesNo.stringToEnum.put( byn.toString(), byn );
        }
    }

    BaseYesNo( String yesNoVal ) {
        this.yesNoVal = yesNoVal;
    }

    public static BaseYesNo fromString( String dbValue ) {
        return BaseYesNo.stringToEnum.get( dbValue );
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return this.yesNoVal;
    }
}

Answer 1

I had the same error as you. The problem with mine was that I had mistakenly placed @Size on my enum property:

public class PhoneNumber {
  @Size(max=30) //ERROR: this validation annotation is what caused my error
  @Nonnull
  @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
  private Type type;
  @Size(max = 30)
  @Nonnull
  private String number;

  public enum Type {
    Cell, Home, Work, Other
  }
}

Once I removed the erroneous @Size, my error went away.

@Enumerated didn't cause any problems for me, and I doubt @Column would. Perhaps you had another validation annotation you skimmed over like I did.

For my testing, I was using hibernate-validator-4.1.0-Final.jar