Question

I have a model class, with a property like this:

[Display(Name = "Phone", Description="Hello World!")]
public string Phone1 { get; set; }

Displaying a label and rendering a textbox for input in my view is pretty easy:

@Html.LabelFor(model => model.Organization.Phone1)
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Organization.Phone1)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Organization.Phone1)

But how do I render the value of the Description annotation attribute, i.e. “Hello World!”??

Answer 1

I ended up with a helper like this:

using System;
using System.Linq.Expressions;
using System.Web.Mvc;

public static class MvcHtmlHelpers
{
    public static MvcHtmlString DescriptionFor<TModel, TValue>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> self, Expression<Func<TModel, TValue>> expression)
    {
        var metadata = ModelMetadata.FromLambdaExpression(expression, self.ViewData);
        var description = metadata.Description;

        return MvcHtmlString.Create(string.Format(@"<span>{0}</span>", description));
    }
}

Thanks to those who led me in the right direction. 🙂