I built a library to define DTOs, Validation, and Schema in one place. Thoughts?

Juls — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 16:19:01 +0000

I've been working on a new project called FluentSchema and would love to get your feedback on the idea.

It's trying to solve a common problem: we often define the same data structure in three different places:

The Java record (our DTO)
The Jakarta Validation (@NotNull, @Size, @Email...)
The OpenAPI .yaml file (for API docs)

All three have to be kept in sync manually. A change in one place means you have to remember to update the other two. It's a lot of boilerplate and easy to make mistakes.

My library tries to fix this by creating a single source of truth, inspired by libraries like Zod in the TypeScript world.

The whole idea is: Define your schema once, in code, and get everything else derived from it.

Here's the "Before" (The typical way)

// 1. The DTO
public record UserRegistration(
    @NotNull @Email String email,
    @NotNull @Size(min = 8, max = 100) String password,
    @NotNull @Size(min = 2, max = 50) String firstName,
    @NotNull @Size(min = 2, max = 50) String lastName,
    @Min(13) @Max(120) Integer age,
    @Valid Address address
) {}

public record Address(
    @NotNull @Size(min = 1, max = 100) String street,
    @NotNull @Size(min = 1, max = 50) String city,
    @NotNull @Pattern(regexp = "^[0-9]{5}$") String zipCode
) {}

// 2. ...plus a separate Validator class for custom logic
// (e.g., "password can't contain email username")

// 3. ...plus 30+ lines of OpenAPI YAML to define the schema

And here's the "After" (With FluentSchema)

import static io.fluentschema.Schemas.*;

public class UserSchemas {

    @GenerateRecord  // This generates the record at compile-time
    public static final ObjectSchema<User> USER_REGISTRATION = object()
        .field("email", string().email().transform(String::toLowerCase))
        .field("password", string().min(8).max(100))
        .field("firstName", string().min(2).max(50).transform(String::trim))
        .field("lastName", string().min(2).max(50).transform(String::trim))
        .field("age", integer().min(13).max(120).optional())
        .field("address", object()
            .field("street", string().min(1).max(100))
            .field("city", string().min(1).max(50))
            .field("zipCode", string().regex("^[0-9]{5}$")))
        .field("tags", array(string().min(2)).optional())
        // Custom validation lives with the schema
        .refine(user -> {
            String emailUser = user.get("email").toString().split("@")[0];
            return !user.get("password").toString().toLowerCase().contains(emailUser);
        }, "Password cannot contain email username")
        .build();
}

From this single definition, you get:

Compile-Time Code Gen: The @GenerateRecord annotation processor generates the User and Address records. No runtime reflection.
Runtime Validation: You can just call USER_REGISTRATION.parse(untrustedInput) and it validates everything, including the custom .refine() logic.
Data Transformation: It handles the .transform(String::toLowerCase) and type coercions (like a string "25" to an Integer) automatically.
(Planned) OpenAPI Export: The next step is to export this definition directly to JSON Schema/OpenAPI, so you can ditch the manual YAML file.

This is a new project and I'm just looking for some honest feedback.

What do you think of this "schema-as-code" approach?
Is this a problem you've actually run into?
Any obvious downsides or pitfalls I'm not seeing?

Here's the GitHub repo with the full README if you want to see more:
https://github.com/jlapugot/fluentschema

Thanks for taking a look!

DEV Community: Juls

I built a library to define DTOs, Validation, and Schema in one place. Thoughts?

Here's the "Before" (The typical way)

And here's the "After" (With FluentSchema)