Question

I have an simple class that I get from a webservice.

public class person 
{
   public string name  { get; set; }
   public int number  { get; set; }
}

And a second class in my code

public class people
{
   [ValidatePerson]
   public List<person> myPeople;
}

and a custom ValidationAttribute

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Property,AllowMultiple = false)]
public class ValidatePerson : ValidationAttribute
{
   protected override ValidationResult IsValid(object value, ValidationContext validationContext)
   {
     ValidationResult returnValue = ValidationResult.Success;
     return returnValue; // do stuff later
   }
}

Because person comes from a webservice I can’t add a decorator to it (that I know of) and adding the decorator to the attribute in people means that “value” is a List<person> not a person.

The reason I want to validated person not List<person> is because I’m using @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model); in the editortemplate for person and I’d like to have multiple messages like “this is not a valid person” not a block at the top that says “you have 3 invalid people”.

Answer 1

Simply create a new model for person you want to validate, i.e:

public class personValidator 
{
   [ValidatePerson]
   public string name  { get; set; }
   public int number  { get; set; }
}

Then copy the result of the webservice to your personValidator class, and use it in the View.