Question

I’m building a program that relies on a old legacy system.
I’m especially writing a custom CRUD repository over a POCO/persistent agnostic model classes.

Ex (simplified):

public class Company { // No dep with the legacy objects
    public string CompanyName {get; set;}
}

public class CompanyRepository { // other project
    public Company Get(ID companyID)
    {
        var myOldSchoolCompany = oldSystem.GetCompany(companyID.Key);
        return new Company { CompanyName = myOldSchoolCompany.CompanyName; }
    }
    public Company Save(Company company)
    {
        var myOldSchoolCompany = oldSystem.GetCompany(companyID.Key);
        myOldSchoolCompany.CompanyName = company.CompanyName;
        oldSystem.Save(myOldSchoolCompany);
    }        
}

this code is working as expected, but I’d like to go further, with adding checks and validations.
I need to be able to have mandatory fields, range validation, etc.

I like the DataAnnotation mechanisms that allow me to add this informations on the model itself.
Is it possible (and a good idea) to reuse this mechanisms ?
Precisely, is there a OOB Validate method that can validate a model object ?

thanks in advance,
steve

Answer 1

I think it’s a good practice to use annotations for validation. Some common frameworks like ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framwork make use of this.
You can use Validator class to validate an annotated object.

I recommend you build a small framework to integrate the annotation framework and your system classes.