Question

I have a bunch of classes generated from my EntityFramework based DAL. I don’t want to modify those classes directly in case I regenerate them from the database, but I want to be able to specify certain fields are [Required]. I thought about making another class that inherited from my data object and add the attribute to the new class’s field, but then I have to hide the base class’s property. Is there a good/easy way to do this without worrying about losing my manual changes on regeneration, and without rewriting the objects entirely?

Thanks

Answer 1

you can define your models as partial classes and specify metadata else where.

ex:

[MetadataType(typeof(UserMetaData))]
public partial class User
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

public class UserMetaData
{
    [Required]
    public string Name;
}