Question

I’ve got a ViewModel for adding a user with properties: Email, Password, ConfirmPassword with Required attribute on all properties. When editing a user I want the Password and ConfirmPassword properties not to be required.

Is there a way to disable validation for certain properties in different controller actions, or is it just best to create a seperate EditViewModel?

Answer 1

I like to break it down and make a base model with all the common data and inhierit for each view:

class UserBaseModel
{
    int ID { get; set; }

    [Required]
    string Name { get; set; }       

    [Required]
    string Email { get; set; }               
    // etc...
}

class UserNewModel : UserBaseModel
{
    [Required]
    string Password { get; set; }

    [Required]
    string ConfirmPassword { get; set; }
}

class UserEditModel : UserBaseModel
{
    string Password { get; set; }
    string ConfirmPassword { get; set; }
}

Interested to know if there is a better way as well although this way seems very clean an flexible.