CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.net-mvc-3validationmodel
Peter
Peter

Reputation: 14518

ASP.NET MVC3 Conditional Validation of nested model for EditorTemplate

Suppose you have a viewModel:

public class CreatePersonViewModel
{
    [Required]
    public bool HasDeliveryAddress {get;set;}

    // Should only be validated when HasDeliveryAddress is true
    [RequiredIf("HasDeliveryAddress", true)]
    public Address Address { get; set; }
}

And the model Address will look like this:

public class Address : IValidatableObject
{
    [Required]
    public string City { get; set; }
    [Required]        
    public string HouseNr { get; set; }
    [Required]
    public string CountryCode { get; set; }
    [Required]
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    [Required]
    public string LastName { get; set; }
    [Required]
    public string ZipCode { get; set; }
    [Required]
    public string Street { get; set; }

    #region IValidatableObject Members

    public IEnumerable<ValidationResult> Validate(ValidationContext validationContext)
    {
        string[] requiredFields;
        var results = new List<ValidationResult>();

        // some custom validations here (I removed them to keep it simple)

        return results;
    }

    #endregion
}

Some would suggest to create a viewmodel for Address and add some custom logic there but I need an instance of Address to pass to my EditorTemplate for Address.

The main problem here is that the validation of Address is done before the validation of my PersonViewModel so I can't prevent it.

Note: the RequiredIfAttribute is a custom attribute which does just what I want for simple types.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1930

Answers (2)

Rich O&#39;Kelly
Rich O&#39;Kelly

Reputation: 41767

Simon Ince has an alpha release of Mvc.ValidationToolkit which seems to be able to do what you want.

Update
As I understand it, the 'problem' lies in the DefaultModelBinder class, which validates your model on the basis that if it finds a validation attribute it asks it if the value is valid (quite reasonable really!), it has no notion of hierarchy. In order to support your required functionality you'll have to write a custom model binder that binds and then validates, if required, as determined by your declarative markup.
If you do write such a class it may be a good candidate for MVC futures.

Upvotes: 0

Darin Dimitrov
Darin Dimitrov

Reputation: 1039538

Would have been a piece of cake if you had used FluentValidation.NET instead of DataAnnotations or IValidatableObject which limit the validation power quite in complex scenarios:

public class CreatePersonViewModelValidator : AbstractValidator<CreatePersonViewModel>
{
    public CreatePersonViewModelValidator()
    {
        RuleFor(x => x.Address)
            .SetValidator(new AddressValidator())
            .When(x => x.HasDeliveryAddress);
    }
}

Upvotes: 7

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