Question

I’ve wracked my brain on using the MetadataType / buddy class to get DisplayName / Display attributes working on my Entity Framework classes in MVC3. In my views, if I use @Html.LabelFor, I still just get the property name rather than the display attribute. My use case and set-up is very simplistic:

[MetadataType(typeof(ProductMetadata))]
public partial class Product
{
}

public class ProductMetadata
{
    [Display(Name = "Why does this not work????")]
    object ProductName { get; set; }

    [Display(Name = "Discontinued Date")]
    object DiscontinuedDate { get; set; }
}

If I then use an Html helper like LabelFor:

@Html.LabelFor(m => m.First().ProductName)

I still just get the property name in my output. Even if I do this programmatically in a custom Html extension, I just get the property name rather than the extected attribute value:

ModelMetadata.FromLambdaExpression(expression, html.ViewData).DisplayName

Any ideas or help on this would be appreciated. Is there something I am missing here?

Answer 1

It is not working because the properties are private in the ProductMetadata class. Change it to

public class ProductMetadata
{
    [Display(Name = "It works!!!")]
    public object ProductName { get; set; }

    [Display(Name = "Discontinued Date")]
    public object DiscontinuedDate { get; set; }
}