Question

I have the following model:

public class Contact
{
    public Contact()
    {
        Name = "Your Name";
        Email = "Your Email";
        Message = "Your Message";
    }

    [Required]
    [StringLength(60,MinimumLength = 3)]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [Required]
    [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)]
    [RegularExpression(@"\b[A-Z0-9._%-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b")]
    public string Email { get; set; }

    [Required]
    [StringLength(2200, MinimumLength = 10)]
    [DataType(DataType.MultilineText)]
    public string Message { get; set; }
}

For Message and Name, their default values (in the constructor) actually pass validation, obviously that is bad. I know I could check for this and throw an error in the Controller, but I’m trying to find a way to do these in the model (as I assume that is the correct place to do it).

Answer 1

I wouldn’t do this at all server side. Use a textbox watermark ala one of the many methods for ex.

http://code.google.com/p/jquery-watermark/