Spring Boot 3.4.6 validation not triggering for @Email and @NonNull on MongoDB @Document entity

I'm building a Spring Boot 3.4.6 application using MongoDB and encountering an issue where @NonNull and @Email annotations are not triggering validation errors/exceptions even though I am using @Valid @RequestBody in the Controller. The only validation that is working is @Indexed (unique = true)

(Yess, @NonNull and @Email are 2 completely different annotations...)

I have tried:

• Rebuilding my entire project (mvn clean build)
• Checking for the required dependencies
• Confirmed all annotations are from jakarta.validation.*, not javax.validation.* (for @Email annotation)
• Sending clear invalid inputs using Postman

Yet, no validation error is triggered, and the user still gets created.

Here’s my setup:

User.java Entity Class

package com.sathwikhbhat.journalApp.entity;

import jakarta.validation.constraints.Email;
import lombok.AllArgsConstructor;
import lombok.Data;
import lombok.NoArgsConstructor;
import lombok.NonNull;
import org.bson.types.ObjectId;
import org.springframework.data.annotation.Id;
import org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.index.Indexed;
import org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.mapping.DBRef;
import org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.mapping.Document;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

@Data
@NoArgsConstructor
@AllArgsConstructor
@Document(collection = "users")
public class User {
    @Id
    private ObjectId id;
    @Indexed(unique = true)
    @NonNull
    private String userName;
    @NonNull
    @Indexed(unique = true)
    @Email
    private String email;
    private boolean sentimentAnalysis;
    @NonNull
    private String password;
    @DBRef
    private List<JournalEntry> journalEntries = new ArrayList<>();
    private List<String> roles;
}

PublicController.java Controller Class

package com.sathwikhbhat.journalApp.controller;

import com.sathwikhbhat.journalApp.entity.User;
import com.sathwikhbhat.journalApp.service.UserService;
import jakarta.validation.Valid;
import lombok.extern.slf4j.Slf4j;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.dao.DuplicateKeyException;
import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;
import org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestBody;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@Slf4j
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/public")
public class PublicController {

    @Autowired
    private UserService userService;

    @PostMapping("createUser")
    public ResponseEntity<?> createUser(@Valid @RequestBody User user) {
        try {
            userService.saveNewUser(user);
            log.info("User created successfully: {}", user.getUserName());
            return new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.CREATED);
        } catch (DuplicateKeyException e) {
            log.error(e.getMessage());
            return new ResponseEntity<>("Username already exists: ", HttpStatus.CONFLICT);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            log.error(e.getMessage());
            return new ResponseEntity<>("Internal server error: " + e.getMessage(), HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
        }
    }
}

Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!