How to get error text in controller from BindingResult

Disclaimer: I still do not use Spring-MVC 3.0

But i think the same approach used by Spring 2.5 can fullfil your needs

for (Object object : bindingResult.getAllErrors()) {
    if(object instanceof FieldError) {
        FieldError fieldError = (FieldError) object;

        System.out.println(fieldError.getCode());
    }

    if(object instanceof ObjectError) {
        ObjectError objectError = (ObjectError) object;

        System.out.println(objectError.getCode());
    }
}

I hope it can be useful to you

UPDATE

If you want to get the message provided by your resource bundle, you need a registered messageSource instance (It must be called messageSource)

<bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource">
    <property name="basenames" value="ValidationMessages"/>
</bean>

Inject your MessageSource instance inside your View

@Autowired
private MessageSource messageSource;

And to get your message, do as follows

for (Object object : bindingResult.getAllErrors()) {
    if(object instanceof FieldError) {
        FieldError fieldError = (FieldError) object;

        /**
          * Use null as second parameter if you do not use i18n (internationalization)
          */

        String message = messageSource.getMessage(fieldError, null);
    }
}

Your Validator should looks like

/**
  * Use null as fourth parameter if you do not want a default message
  */
errors.rejectValue("<FIELD_NAME_GOES_HERE>", "answerform.questionId.invalid", new Object [] {"123"}, null);

With Java 8 Streams

bindingResult
.getFieldErrors()
.stream()
.forEach(f -> System.out.println(f.getField() + ": " + f.getDefaultMessage()));

BEAN XML:

<bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource">
    <property name="basenames">
        <list>
            <value>messages</value>
        </list>            
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="messageAccessor" class="org.springframework.context.support.MessageSourceAccessor">
    <constructor-arg index="0" ref="messageSource"/>
</bean> 

---

JAVA:

for (FieldError error : errors.getFieldErrors()) {
    logger.debug(messageAccessor.getMessage(error));
}

NOTE: Calling Errors.getDefaultMessage() will not necessarily return the same message that is generated from the code + args. The defaultMessage is a separate value defined when calling the Errors.rejectValue() method. See Errors.rejectValue() API Here

I met this problem recently, and found an easier way (maybe it's the support of Spring 3)

    List<FieldError> errors = bindingResult.getFieldErrors();
    for (FieldError error : errors ) {
        System.out.println (error.getObjectName() + " - " + error.getDefaultMessage());
    }

There's no need to change/add the message source.