How do I fix "The value is shorter than minLength"?

Supply a value whose post-normalization length meets the facet. Validate after applying the same trimming and normalization the serializer uses. Lower minLength only when the business rule really changed; do not pad values with meaningless spaces.

XSD validation error

The value is shorter than minLength

The value is shorter than the simple type's minLength facet permits, often because trimming differs between producer and schema.

Element 'nickname': [facet 'minLength'] The value has a length of '2'; this underruns the allowed minimum length of '3'. (line 4)

What it means

minLength constrains the length of a datatype's value after its whitespace rules have been applied. For xs:string-derived values, length is counted in Unicode characters rather than UTF-8 bytes.

The diagnostic gives both the observed and allowed lengths. That makes this a contract mismatch, not a parse problem: the XML is complete and the value is simply too short.

What usually causes it

A placeholder or abbreviation is shorter than the production contract allows.
Whitespace normalization collapses or removes characters before the length check.
The schema was tightened without updating existing producers or stored records.
Application code counted bytes or UTF-16 code units while the schema processor counted characters.

How to fix it

Supply a value whose post-normalization length meets the facet.
Validate after applying the same trimming and normalization the serializer uses.
Lower minLength only when the business rule really changed; do not pad values with meaningless spaces.

The same error elsewhere

libxml2 words these plainly. Xerces numbers them, and those cvc- codes are what most people end up searching for.

Xerces (Java)
cvc-minLength-valid: Value 'Al' with length = '2' is not facet-valid with respect to minLength '3'.
.NET System.Xml
The MinLength constraint failed.

Before and after

Both documents below are well-formed XML — that is the point. The test suite re-checks them against the real validator on every build: the first is confirmed to produce the exact message above, the second to validate cleanly.

Fails validation

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<order id="A-1">
  <customer>Ada</customer>
  <nickname>Al</nickname>
  <issued>2026-01-31</issued>
  <state>open</state>
  <line>
    <code>AB-1234</code>
    <qty>2</qty>
  </line>
</order>

Validates

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<order id="A-1">
  <customer>Ada</customer>
  <issued>2026-01-31</issued>
  <state>open</state>
  <line>
    <code>AB-1234</code>
    <qty>2</qty>
  </line>
</order>

The schema both are checked against

order.xsd

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <xs:simpleType name="status">
    <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
      <xs:enumeration value="open"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="closed"/>
    </xs:restriction>
  </xs:simpleType>
  <xs:simpleType name="sku">
    <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
      <xs:pattern value="[A-Z]{2}-\d{4}"/>
    </xs:restriction>
  </xs:simpleType>
  <xs:simpleType name="shortLabel">
    <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
      <xs:minLength value="3"/>
    </xs:restriction>
  </xs:simpleType>
  <xs:element name="order">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element name="customer" type="xs:string"/>
        <xs:element name="middleName" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"/>
        <xs:element name="nickname" type="shortLabel" minOccurs="0"/>
        <xs:element name="issued" type="xs:date"/>
        <xs:element name="state" type="status"/>
        <xs:element name="line" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="2">
          <xs:complexType>
            <xs:sequence>
              <xs:element name="code" type="sku"/>
              <xs:element name="qty" type="xs:positiveInteger"/>
            </xs:sequence>
          </xs:complexType>
        </xs:element>
      </xs:sequence>
      <xs:attribute name="id" type="xs:string" use="required"/>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

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