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

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

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.

OVal 1.x requires Java 5 or newer

OVal 2.0 or higher requires Java 8 or newer

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>

The user guide is available USERGUIDE.md

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

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/

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/.