Chapter 6. Running the Signature Test

6.1. Obtaining the sigtest tool
6.2. Creating the signature file
6.3. Running the signature test
6.4. Forcing a signature test failure

One of the requirements of an implementation passing the TCK is for it to pass the Bean Validation signature test. This section describes how the signature file is generated and how to run it against your implementation.

6.1. Obtaining the sigtest tool

You can obtain the Sigtest tool from the Sigtest home page. The TCK uses version 3_0-dev-bin-b09-24_apr_2013 which can be obtained from the SigTest download page. The user guide can be found here (the latest published documentation version is 2.2 but this documentation still applies to SigTest 3.0 in general). The downloadable package contains the jar files used in the commands below.

6.2. Creating the signature file

The TCK package contains the files validation-api-java6.sig, validation-api-java7.sig and validation-api-java8.sig (in the artifacts directory) which were created using the following commands:

// using Java 6
java -jar sigtestdev.jar Setup -classpath $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/rt.jar:validation-api-1.1.0.Final.jar -package javax.validation -filename validation-api-java6.sig


// using Java 7
java -jar sigtestdev.jar Setup -classpath $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/rt.jar:validation-api-1.1.0.Final.jar -package javax.validation -filename validation-api-java7.sig


// using Java 8
java -jar sigtestdev.jar Setup -classpath $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/rt.jar:validation-api-1.1.0.Final.jar -package javax.validation -filename validation-api-java8.sig

In order to pass the Bean Validation TCK you have to make sure that your API passes the signature tests against validation-api.sig.

6.3. Running the signature test

To run the signature test use:

java -jar sigtest.jar Test -classpath $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/rt.jar:validation-api-1.1.0.Final.jar -static -package javax.validation -filename validation-api-java6.sig

You have to chose the right version of the signature file depending on your Java version. In order to run against your own Bean Validation API replace validation-api-1.1.0.Final.jar with your own API jar. You should get the message "STATUS:Passed.".

6.4. Forcing a signature test failure

Just for fun (and to confirm that the signature test is working correctly), you can try the following:

1) Edit validation-api-java6.sig

2) Modify one of the class signatures - in the following example we change one of the constructors for ValidationException - here's the original:

CLSS public javax.validation.ValidationException
cons public ValidationException()
cons public ValidationException(java.lang.String)
cons public ValidationException(java.lang.String,java.lang.Throwable)
cons public ValidationException(java.lang.Throwable)
supr java.lang.RuntimeException

Let's change the default (empty) constructor parameter to one with a java.lang.Integer parameter instead:

CLSS public javax.validation.ValidationException
cons public ValidationException(java.lang.Integer)
cons public ValidationException(java.lang.String)
cons public ValidationException(java.lang.String,java.lang.Throwable)
cons public ValidationException(java.lang.Throwable)
supr java.lang.RuntimeException

3) Now when we run the signature test using the above command, we should get the following errors:

Missing Constructors
--------------------

javax.validation.ValidationException:   constructor public javax.validation.ValidationException.ValidationException(java.lang.Integer)

Added Constructors
------------------

javax.validation.ValidationException:   constructor public javax.validation.ValidationException.ValidationException()


STATUS:Failed.2 errors