Unique Identifiers for classes - Java with Spring

Question

My use case requires me to implement multiple validators which implement the interface:

public interface Validator {
 boolean validate(Object o);
}

Based on the business group of the Object o, a different combination of validators need to be applied.

For each business group, I plan to maintain a list of Validators. This list will be maintained in an external configuration store. Ex:

BusinessGroupA {
 Validators = [v1,v2,v3,v4]
}

BusinessGroupB {
 Validators = [v3,v6]
}

What seems to be a good way to uniquely identify each validator from the list? Should v1,v2 be spring ids corresponding to their respective validators or do I need to explicitly create a unique identifier for each such validator and map that internally through a hashmap in my code?

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

Use an identifier that has an explicit name.
Validators with explicit names make your code so much more readable: instead of BusinessGroupA having validators 'v1', 'v2', 'v3' and 'v4' the CustomerOrderGroup is validated by the NoOutstandingPaymentsValidator, SufficientCreditValidator...

Answer 2

Use a dependency injection (or IoC) framework.

What you are describing is a dependency injection framework which will load your dependencies for you via configuration.

Spring offers a DI framework.