Need for a @NonEmpty annotation?

[Kannan Ekanath]

Hello,

I religiously use @NonNull annotations to mark parameters that should not be null. I was wondering if people have felt enough need for a semantical @NonEmpty annotation.

The main motivation being that for Strings usually @NonNull is not good enough because strings usually come from property files/configs or from external systems (json/yaml/whatever) and they often end up as blanks or "    ". 

You can argue the same goes with collections usually nulls are difficult to handle and hence empty collections are passed. I believe this annotation will make sure it covers these scenarios as I am always checking them otherwise. 

Thoughts?

Kannan

[Constantine Plotnikov]

Hi!

From a logically formal point of view, @NonEmpty should not imply @NonNull. Non-empty nullable, means that if value is not null, its length should be more than one element. It is like a shortcut for @Size(min = 1). Most utilities and java validation still imply that non-empty is non-null, so it is a composition of of @NonNull and @Size(min=1) (https://javaee.github.io/javaee-spec/javadocs/javax/validation/constraints/NotEmpty.html). To forbid the string " " the correct annotation would be @NonBlank, that theoretically also should be orthogonal to @NonNull, but it is not (https://javaee.github.io/javaee-spec/javadocs/javax/validation/constraints/NotBlank.html).

So, NonNull, NonEmpty, and NonBlank are progressively more restrictive for strings and each level of validation makes sense.

Best Regard,

Konstantin

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[Kannan Ekanath]

I am happy with the interpretation of this. What is the logical next step? To file an issue in Lombok (how?)

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Regards,
Kannan Ekanath