Question

I currently have:

@Html.EditorFor(model => model.PurchasePrice)

I would like to split this into 2 separate fields separated by a decimal (for price input obviously). But if I do that using basic text boxes I will loose the ability to take advantage of ASP.NET’s validation.

Is there a way to do this, in Razor or by using attributes, so that I am able to keep the JS and server-side validation against my Entity model?

I can easily do it somewhere else by creating my own functions within the viewmodel, but I’m new to MVC3 and not entirely sure if that would be the best route or there is a simpler method.

Edit:

This is kind of the direction I am thinking, I do not fully understand how this works.

I set 2 fields, 1 as ppDollar and 1 as ppCents. In the controller I have:

modelname.PurchasePrice = Request["ppDollar"] + Request["ppCent"];

But, I can look at that and tell that’s not going to work. So, I guess the question really is how is user input validated against the entity model and how can I better take advantage of the built in functionality?

Answer 1

You can create custom editors for particular types that are rendered by EditorFor. You can find a lot of examples of how to do this online, most of them focusing on a custom DateTime editor but the same idea applies to any type. Just one example from a quick search:

http://buildstarted.com/2010/09/10/overriding-displayfor-and-editorfor-to-create-custom-outputs-for-mvc/

In short, the process is:

• Create a partial view template, placed in the Views\Shared\EditorTemplates folder, with the same name as the type (e.g. Decimal.cshtml).
• The view should use, as its model, the type you want to display: @inherits System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage<System.Decimal>
• Make the view display whatever you want, using some field naming convention or whatever.
• You can also pass HTML attributes via the appropriate EditorFor overload, referenced in your template through the ViewData.ModelMetadata.AdditionalValues property.

One thing to note: once you define an editor template it will be used for every call to EditorFor. You can scope them to a specific controller by moving the EditorTemplates folder into the appropriate view subfolder instead of the shared one.