Edwin,
I believe you can implement an untyped version

@GenericValidator( class=..., parameters = @Params(key=, value=) )
Then @Validators(GenericValidator[] value() )

Hibernate Annotations has the ability to "create" annotations (ie recreate the actual validator).

have a look at org.hibernate.test.annotationfactory.AnnotationFactoryTest

Hereby a patch for ValidatorList (based on latest svn checkout)
Also included, a test-case for a 'Loan' class and a bean validatorclass 'After'.

Feel free to comment on the implementation

Edwin

I have the same problem but the GenericValidator seems very verbos. Here is an example of something I am playing with:

@Expressions(
{ @Expression(value = "value.field1 ne value.field2", message = "Field1 must not equal Field2."), @Expression(value = "value.field3 > value.field4", message = "Field3 must be greater than Field4.") })
public class Entity {
private String field1;
private String field2;
private Integer field3;
private Integer field4;
...
}

Ignore the fact that I am using expression language.

The Expressions annotation is not linked to a ValidatorClass, but the Expression annotation is.

public @interface Expressions {
Expression[] value();
}

@ValidatorClass(ExpressionValidator.class)
public @interface Expression {

String value();
String message() default "";
}

In ClassValidator when it initializes it gets all the annotations off of the class and members and checks if they have a ValidatorClass. It could also use reflection to see if the annotations aggregate other annotations which in turn are linked to a ValidatorClass.

This would require a moderate bit of rework to ClassValidator, but would make using it much cleaner.

Thoughts?

Problem is the user needs to create the Annotation container for each specific type.
I guess that's the price to pay, the solution is more elegant when reading the code.
the algorithm should check if the return type of value() is a array of annotations. checking all the members make few sense, I think.
I like the el annotation btw, I'm waiting for the unified el spec.

This was easier than I thought it would be. I just added the handleAggregateAnnotations() method and called it in two places.

NOTE: The source I attached is from 3.2.0.CR1, because I am still using and older version of the jboss embedded container.

Btw, I would be glad to donate the EL validator, but I am using commons-jexl.

Commited John's patch. I don't think Edwin's solution is needed anymore.
Thanks to both of you guys

Great! I have created a blog entry that talks about this topic:

http://jroller.com/page/jgilbert01?entry=extending_the_hibernate_validation_framework

cool, nice ideas. I like the EL actually

I like John's solution better too