Validated

Variant of JSR-303's javax.validation.Valid, supporting the specification of validation groups. Designed for convenient use with Spring's JSR-303 support but not JSR-303 specific.

Can be used e.g. with Spring MVC handler methods arguments. Supported through org.springframework.validation.SmartValidator's validation hint concept, with validation group classes acting as hint objects.

Can also be used with method level validation, indicating that a specific class is supposed to be validated at the method level (acting as a pointcut for the corresponding validation interceptor), but also optionally specifying the validation groups for method-level validation in the annotated class. Applying this annotation at the method level allows for overriding the validation groups for a specific method but does not serve as a pointcut; a class-level annotation is nevertheless necessary to trigger method validation for a specific bean to begin with. Can also be used as a meta-annotation on a custom stereotype annotation or a custom group-specific validated annotation.