How much validation is too much validation in the tooling?
As we've been working on migrating the SwitchYard editor over to use the Eclipse DataBinding framework to simplify our lives a bit and offer a more consistent method of interacting with the SwitchYard config model under the covers, we've also been looking at adding field-level validation to the mix. Initially this may be rudimentary, identifying mandatory fields and such, but we're also looking at adding more safeguards to ensure that no wonky data gets into the config.
So here's my question... How much validation is too much validation when we start getting down to the nitty gritty?
Here's a partial list of the validators I see us using:
1) Mandatory fields (i.e. if a field is empty and it's required, don't save until we get something in here)
2) Property substitution (Properties - SwitchYard - Project Documentation Editor) for some fields where identified in the schema (i.e propInteger, etc.)
3) Numeric fields (i.e. unless it's a property substitution, "abc123" is not a valid BigInteger)
4) URI format (i.e. "myuri" isn't valid, but "ftp://foo@myserver?password=secret&ftpClient.dataTimeout=30000" is)
5) Regex (is it valid regex or not - probably using the java.util.regex.Pattern class to test it)
And some fields are going to require a sequence of validators... For instance, the Camel Binding's "configURI" field is mandatory and must be a valid URI. And the "interval" field on a Rules Logger element is optional (so can be empty), but can use property substitution and if not escaped properly must be a valid number...
Here's an example, creating a new Camel Binding...
How far do we go with this? I think we can definitely handle whatever needs to be done, but I'm curious what you think...
