We have a JEE interceptor that validates method calls using the MethodValidator from the hibernate-validator package. We are running into problems when generic methods on stateless session beans are called that have been overwritten in a subclass. The problem is that the InvocationContext passed into our interceptor references the synthetic bridge method generated by the compiler instead of the correct overwritten method. Synthetic methods are ignored by hibernate-validator (see BeanMetaDataImpl.initMethodConstraints). This results in a NullPointerException when hibernate-validator tries to validate the given synthetic bridge method.

Code example:

public interface CrudService<D extends PersistentElement> {
  D elementById(long id);
}

@Local
public interface AccountService extends CrudService<Account> {
  ... some additional methods
}

public class AbstractCrudServiceImpl<D extends PersistentElement> implements CrudService<D> {
  public D elementById(long id) {
     ... do something
  }
}

@Stateless
public class AccountServiceImpl extends AbstractCrudServiceImpl<Account> implements AccountService {
  @Override
  public Account elementById(long id) {
    ... a specialized implementation
  }
}

public class SomeOtherSessionBean {
  @Inject
  private AccountService accountService;
 
  public void doSomething() {
    accountService.elementById(1);
  }
}

In the example code above 'SomeOtherSessionBean.doSomething()' calls the method 'elementById'. In that case the InvocationContext passed into our interceptor references the synthetic bridge method with the signature 'PersistentElement AccountServiceImpl.elementById(long)' instead of the concrete method 'Account AccountServiceImpl.elementById(long)'.

This seems to be a bug, isn't it?