Development of OVal has been stopped. Please migrate to a Bean Validation implementation, such as Apache BVal or Hibernate Validator.

OVal - the object validation framework for Java

1. What is it?
2. Java Compatibility
3. Binaries
4. User Guide
5. Articles about OVal
6. Projects using OVal
7. License

<a name="what-is-it"></a>What is it?

OVal is a pragmatic and extensible validation framework for any kind of Java objects (not only JavaBeans). Constraints can be declared with annotations (@NotNull, @MaxLength), POJOs or XML.

Custom constraints can be expressed as custom Java classes or by using scripting languages such as JavaScript, Groovy, BeanShell, OGNL or MVEL.

Besides field/property validation OVal implements Programming by Contract features by utilizing AspectJ based aspects or via Spring AOP. This for example allows runtime validation of constructor/method arguments.

<a name="compatibility"></a>Java Compatibility

OVal 1.x requires Java 5 or newer

OVal 2.0 or higher requires Java 8 or newer

<a name="binaries"></a>Binaries

Releases of this project are available at https://search.maven.org/artifact/net.sf.oval/oval

You can add OVal as a dependency to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>net.sf.oval</groupId>
  <artifactId>oval</artifactId>
  <version>[VERSION_GOES_HERE]</version>
</dependency>

<a name="user-guide"></a>User Guide

The user guide is available USERGUIDE.md

<a name="articles-about-oval"></a>Articles about OVal

There exist some articles and blog entries talking about and/or referencing OVal:

• Wikipedia (DE): OVal (Framework)
  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/OVal_(Framework) [English Translation]

• An Experimental Evaluation of JavaDesign-by-Contract Extensions (2018)
  http://jultika.oulu.fi/Record/nbnfioulu-201812063243

• GlueCoders' Spring Boot Guide: Validation of Request Models using OVal (2017)
  https://github.com/GlueCoders/springboot-guide-docs/blob/master/requestvalidation-oval.md

• A Constraint-Based Approach to Data Quality in Information Systems (2017)
  https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/198644/1/Thesis-DavidWeber.pdf

• How to integrate Oval validation with Spring 3 (2013)
  http://maheshjq.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-to-integrate-oval-validation-with.html

• OVal - validate your models quickly and effortlessly (2011)
  https://touk.pl/blog/2011/07/14/oval-validate-your-models-quickly-and-effortlessly/

• A Valid Point (2011)
  http://www.grinshpoon.com/pblog/2011/06/29/a-valid-point/

• Validaciones: Hibernate Validator vs OVal (2010)
  https://unpocodejava.com/2010/05/07/validaciones-hibernate-validator-vs-oval/ [English Translation]

• Enkel validering av Java-objekter med OVal (2010)
  https://blogg.bekk.no/enkel-validering-av-java-objekter-med-oval-2054b67c7774

• Oval Validation Framework (2010)
  http://vathzala.blogspot.de/2010/03/oval-validation-framework.html

• OVal - Object Validation With POJO (2009)
  https://bitsofwizardry.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/oval-object-validation-with-pojo/

• Diseño por Contrato con OVal y Spring [Design by Contract with OVal and Spring] (2009)
  https://dosideas.com/noticias/java/562-diseno-por-contrato-con-oval-y-spring [English Translation]

• An Aspect-Oriented Infrastructure for Design by Contract in Java
  https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.131.4053&rep=rep1&type=pdf

• OVal Blog Entry Series at the "JEE, BPEL, SOA" blog (2008)

  • JSR 303 and OVal Validation Framework
  • OVal and profiles
  • Spring Web Flow 1 piecemeal validation and OVal integration

• Pre and post condition validation with OVal as intruments of software architecture (2008)
  https://stigl.wordpress.com/2008/07/19/pre-and-post-condition-validation-with-oval-as-intruments-of-software-architecture/

• OVal: The simple validation framework for Java (2008)
  http://takezoe.blogspot.com/2008/03/oval-simple-validation-framework-for.html

• Validación Java: OVal, una joya escondida (2007)
  http://brigomp.blogspot.com/2007/09/hay-veces-que-los-frameworks-menos.html

• Die Pro-Pix Homepage - Design by Contract (2007)
  http://pro-pix.de/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=1

• In pursuit of code quality: Defensive programming with AOP (2007)
  http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-cq01307/

• Limiting conditional complexity with AOP (2006)
  https://nofluffjuststuff.com/blog/paul_duvall/2006/12/limiting_conditional_complexity_with_aop

<a name="projects-using-oval"></a>Projects using OVal

Active:

• gdv.xport https://github.com/oboehm/gdv.xport
• eSciDoc https://www.escidoc.org/
• Metawidget https://github.com/metawidget/metawidget
• Play! Framework 1.x https://github.com/playframework/play1
• Struts 2 OVal Plug-in
  • Documentation: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/WW/OVal+Plugin
  • Source: https://github.com/apache/struts/tree/master/plugins/oval

Inactive:

• Jadira Framework (2018)
  • http://jadira.sourceforge.net/
  • https://github.com/JadiraOrg/jadira
• fustewa (2017) - A full web stack based on Spring https://github.com/opensource21/fuwesta
• Omniproperties (2016) - a lightweight configuration utility https://github.com/siemens/omniproperties
• Arena Persistence (2016) http://arena-pers.uqbar.org/
• NexOpen (2014) https://sourceforge.net/projects/nexopen/
• JProvocateur (2012) https://sourceforge.net/projects/jprovocateur/
• Cubby (2010) - Simple Web Application Framework http://cubby.seasar.org/20x/cubby-oval/index.html
• Cayenne annotations (2007) http://sourceforge.net/projects/cayannotations/
• jsfatwork https://code.google.com/archive/p/jsfatwork/
• Polyforms https://code.google.com/archive/p/polyforms/
• rsser https://code.google.com/archive/p/rsser/
• saetc https://code.google.com/archive/p/saetc/
• SaferJava https://code.google.com/archive/p/saferjava/
• suz-lab-gae https://code.google.com/archive/p/suz-lab-gae/
• ultimate-roundtrip https://code.google.com/archive/p/ultimate-roundtrip/

<a name="license"></a>License

All files are released under the Eclipse Public License 2.0.

Individual files contain the following tag instead of the full license text:

SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0

This enables machine processing of license information based on the SPDX License Identifiers that are available here: https://spdx.org/licenses/.