title: Hibernate/JPA/Seam - Validate an Entity Programmatically?
body: <p>I have an entity in my JBoss Seam-based project that makes use of Hibernate Validator annotations throughout.  Although I've got directives in my JSF pages to require elements, etc. I'd like to be able to do one last failsafe validation before calling <code>entityManager.persist()</code> and ending up with a validation exception.</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way to validate the entity programmatically?  I've never worked that deeply with Hibernate/JPA, so I'd love to hear any recommendations for getting this working.  Thanks!</p>