Question

I have an input, type text, element which is being validated using MVC3 validation on the client and I’d like to not have the input value sent to the server when the post occurs.

I have two entities: A “File” entity and a “Company” entity which share a 1 to 1 relationship. The file entity has a CompanyId foreign key.

This is why if you look at the name and id attributes they appear as: File.Company.Code or File_Company_Code.

The reason I want to avoid sending the input value back to the server is when the request reaches the server I only want to bind the values to my entity of type “File”. As it is also receiving a value for “File.Company.Code” it is also attemting to bind the values to the File’s company object, which is what I want to avoid.

The input element is :

    <input name="File.Company.Code" id="File_Company_Code" type="text" data-val-required="Se requiere un c&#243;digo de cliente." data-val="true" value=""/>

    And the span element:
    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-replace="true" data-valmsg-for=" File.Company.Code "/>

I’ve tried:
-Changing the input name and span data-valmsg-for attributes using jquery. But I think that after doing this I may need to rebind the validators??

Any suggestions? (I hope to have explained myself clearly if not let me know.)
Thanks

UPDATE 1 **
Thanks to AFinkelstein sugestion which put me on the right track I updated my domain model such as:

public class FileModel {

        public File File {
            get {
                return this.file;
            }
        }

        *** ADDED this which helped me solve the problem ***
        public Company Company {
            get {
                return this.file.Company;
            }
        }
    }

In my view instead of doing :

 @Html.TextboxFor(model => model.File.Company.Code)  
  @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.File.Company.Code)

I now do:

  @Html.TextboxFor(model => model.Company.Code)  
  @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Company.Code)

This way the generated name and Id attributes have the value: Company.Code and Company_Code, they dont have the preceding “File”. When I receive the post on the server and bind the values to the File object:

 FileModel fileModel = new FileModel();
            try {

                TryUpdateModel(fileModel.File, "File");

as it is not receiving a value for “File.Company.Code” it doesnt attempt to initialize the file’s “Company” object, which was causing me other problems.

Answer 1

As it is also receiving a value for “File.Company.Code” it is also attemting to bind the values to the File’s company object, which is what I want to avoid.

I presume this means that File is a domain model within your project. I recommend using a view model in your view.

public class FileViewModel
{
    //other stuff contained within the File class

    [Required]
    public string FileCompanyCode { get; set: }
}

You can use your view model to create or refetch your actual File after posting. Just don’t set your actual file company object to the file company code property in the view model. This way it doesn’t actually matter if your file company code is binded or not.