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Asked: 2026-05-27T03:13:22+00:00

I have just noticed that DataTypeAttribute class is inherited from System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.ValidationAttribute . In terms

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I have just noticed that DataTypeAttribute class is inherited from System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.ValidationAttribute.

In terms of ASP.NET MVC DefaultModelBinder class, is DataTypeAttribute is a validation attribute? In plain English, does ModelBinder validate the object according to DataTypeAttribute?

For example, if I specify DataType property to DataType.EmailAddress, will it validate the e-mail address or this attribute is only providing metadata for objects.

UPDATE

I found a similar question on SO :

Is the DataTypeAttribute validation working in MVC2?

So, according to that it is not working as a validation attribute. So, why it is inherited from System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.ValidationAttribute if it is not serving as a validation attribute?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    DataTypeAttribute does not contain any validation logic itself.

    The reason it derives from ValidationAttribute is so that you could create a new custom data type class, which was both a DataType and a Validation, all wrapped up into one. It’s an unfortunate side-effect of .NET not allowing multiple inheritance.

    So, yes, it’s a validator… that does no validation by default. It’s waiting patiently for you to do the heavy lifting. 🙂

    Actually, if you look inside of MVC 3 Futures, you’ll see that we leveraged this to create new custom validators where we knew that jQuery was already capable of providing client-side validation logic, and we added mirrored server-side validation logic (and preserved the DataType benefits for templating).

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