Question

North America’s format for dates is MM/dd/yyyy

I am working on project (asp.net MVC 2) for Australia where date format is d/MM/yyyy

in web.config I have

        <globalization
        fileEncoding="utf-8"
        requestEncoding="utf-8"
        responseEncoding="utf-8"
        culture="en-AU"
        uiCulture="en-AU"
        enableClientBasedCulture="true"
    />

in views .net renders dates in right format – “en-AU”, but when I submit form with 14/11/2011 date my ModelState.IsValid equals to False.

How to teach dataannoation to properly validate dates in “en-AU” format?

//update

just found that issue related to GET only

using(Html.BeginForm("Search", "form", FormMethod.Post)) //Works
using(Html.BeginForm("Search", "form", FormMethod.Get)) //Does'n work

**Looks like it is a .net bug !!!

I tried on new mvc2/3 projects

when I use GET, mvc binding doesn’t use current culture**

Thank you.

Answer 1

Finally I’ve got solution thank you for tens of different blog posts and articles. Work perfectly, plus you can apply it not just for dates.

//Global.asax.cs
protected void Application_Start()
{
    ModelBinders.Binders[typeof (DateTime)] = new ForceCultureModelBinder<DateTime>();
    ModelBinders.Binders[typeof(DateTime?)] = new ForceCultureModelBinder<DateTime>();
}

and class

public class ForceCultureModelBinder<T> : IModelBinder where T : struct
{
    public object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
    {
        if (bindingContext == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("bindingContext");

        T? valueAttempt = GetA(bindingContext);
        return valueAttempt == null ? (object) null : valueAttempt.Value;
    }

    private T? GetA(ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
    {
        ValueProviderResult valueResult = bindingContext.ValueProvider.GetValue(bindingContext.ModelName);

        if (valueResult == null)
            return null;

        T? result;
        try
        {
            result = (T?) valueResult.ConvertTo(typeof (T), Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture);
        }
        catch (Exception)
        {
            bindingContext.ModelState.AddModelError(
                    bindingContext.ModelName, 
                    ex.InnerException.Message);
            return null;
        }

        return result;
    }
}