Question

I have the following View code:

@using (Html.BeginForm("Login", "Press", FormMethod.Post))
{
<fieldset>
    <legend>User Registration</legend>
    <div>
        @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.FullName)
        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.FullName)
    </div>
    <div>
        @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Company)
        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Company)
    </div>
    <div>
        @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.EmailAddress)
        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.EmailAddress)
    </div>
    <div>
        @Html.CheckBoxFor(model => model.JoinMailingList)
        Please check this box to recieve a seasonal look book pdf and monthly newsletter
    </div>
    <p>
        <input type="submit" value="Proceed" />
    </p>
</fieldset>
}

And here is my Model:

public class UserViewModel
{
    [Required(ErrorMessage = "Please enter your name.")]
    [MaxLength(100)]
    public string FullName { get; set; }

    [Required(ErrorMessage = "Please enter the name of your company.")]
    [MaxLength(50)]
    public string Company { get; set; }

    [Required(ErrorMessage = "Please enter your email.")]
    [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)]
    [RegularExpression(@"^(([A-Za-z0-9]+_+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\-+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\.+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\++))*[A-Za-z0-9]+@((\w+\-+)|(\w+\.))*\w{1,63}\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6}$", ErrorMessage = "Please enter a valid email address.")]
    [MaxLength(255)]
    public string EmailAddress { get; set; }

    public bool JoinMailingList { get; set; }
}

The problem is that when I click on the ‘Proceed’ button, none of the validation occurs. It just posts the action with no validation performed on it? Do I have to perform this inside the Controller?

Here is my Controller code:

public class PressController : Controller
{
    //
    // GET: /Press
    public ViewResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

    //
    // GET: /Press/Login
    public ViewResult Login()
    {
        return View();
    }

    [HttpPost]
    public ActionResult Login(UserViewModel userViewModel)
    {
        return RedirectToAction("Index", "Press");
    }
}

Answer 1

Make sure that the action you are posting to takes the view model as argument:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Press(UserViewModel model)
{
    // at this stage the validation has been performed during
    // the process of model binding and now you could look in the 
    // modelstate if the model is vaild:

    if (!ModelState.IsValid) 
    {
        // validation failed => redisplay the view so that the user
        // can fix his errors. 
        // Note that calling ModelState.IsValid doesn't trigger any validation
        return View(model);
    }

    // at this stage we know that validation passed => we could do some processing
    // and redirect

    return RedirectToAction("Success");
}

or some people also use the TryUpdateModel method which also allows you to perform model binding which triggers the validation:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Press()
{
    var model = new UserViewModel();
    // validation will be triggered at this stage and the method
    // will return true or false based on the result of this validation
    if (!TryUpdateModel(model))
    {
        // validation failed => redisplay the view so that the user
        // can fix his errors. 
        return View(model);
    }

    // at this stage we know that validation passed => we could do some processing
    // and redirect

    return RedirectToAction("Success");
}

And if you want to enable client side validation, just make sure that the following 2 scripts are referenced in your page:

<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>