Question

Good day!

I’ve a model that is binded from JSON request, say like this:

public class MyModel
{
     public bool isSomeFeatureEnabled { get; set; }
}

And controller like this:

public ActionResult Submit(MyModel request)
{   
    if (ModelState.IsValid)
    {
        ..
    }
    else
    {
        ..
    }
}

When I post empty JSON object to this action ({}) it will be valid with isSomeFeatureEnabled=false. But I want this field ‘required’ in terms that it should be set always in particular value (true\false).

I can make this field nullable and put [Required] on it, but the field is not really nullable per model logic.

The same story with int, double and DateTime fields.

I use ASP.NET MVC 3 and default setting of:

DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.AddImplicitRequiredAttributeForValueTypes = true

Shouldn’t it work for this situation?

Answer 1

I think making this field nullable and also making it Required is the best shot for now. As the book states, . Otherwise, you can write your own attribute, make the validate method return false when passed in value = default(T)