Question

i have this problem that has been buggin me for the last hours.

1. Lets suppose i have this Signup form, that i need to fill it up, all propertieshave the RequiredAttribute, the model is a EF entity named “User”.

2. i have this second edit account details form, and at this moment a specific field (“Username”) is no longer required, because i already have it, the user doesnt need to fil it again and in matter of fact it doest enven show up on the Edit form.

The problem:
when posting the second Edit form, obviously i am stucked with the Username RequiredAttribute.

I would solve this just by adding a “Bind” attribute with “Exclude” option, BUT, this is my current model :

public class AccountDetailsModel
{
    public User user { get; set; }
    public string NEWPASSWORD1 { get; set; } // new password
    public string NEWPASSWORD2 { get; set; } // new password comparison
}

and just looks like Bind Attribute with Exclude option doesnt handle complex Model types. I cant get it to work on this scenario.

Im stuck, scratching my heads for a long time now…

How can i overcome this?

I just want to re-use my EF Entity (User) on 2 different views along with its DataAnnotations.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I just want to re-use my EF Entity (User) on 2 different views along with its DataAnnotations.

Here’s the problem. You shouldn’t do this. I would recommend you setting up view models which are classes specifically tailored for a given view and contain the necessary validation attributes for this view only. To ease the mapping between your EF models and the view models you could use AutoMapper.