Using ASP.Net MVC Data Annotation outside of MVC

Question

i was wondering if there is a way to use ASP.Net's Data annotation without the MVC site.

My example is that i have a class that once created needs to be validated, or will throw an error. I like the data annotations method, instead of a bunch of if blocks fired by the initaliser.

Is there a way to get this to work?

I thought it would be something like:

Add data annotations
Fire a method in the initialiser that calls the MVC validator on the class

any ideas? i must admit i havent added the MVC framework to my project as i was hoping i could just use the data annotations class System.ComponentModel.DataValidation

I created my own version of the DataValidation class, I can possibly outsource it if people are interested. It was done before MVC2, and can accommodate more complex cases. — Yuriy Faktorovich
– Yuriy Faktorovich, Commented Jun 22, 2010 at 2:30

Jeroen K · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-23 08:33:32Z

34

Here's an example:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

public class Foo
{
    [Required(ErrorMessage = "the Bar is absolutely required :-)")]
    public string Bar { get; set; }
}

class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        var foo = new Foo();
        var results = new List<ValidationResult>();
        var context = new ValidationContext(foo, null, null);
        if (!Validator.TryValidateObject(foo, context, results))
        {
            foreach (var error in results)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(error.ErrorMessage);
            }
        }
    }
}

But quite honestly FluentValidation is much more powerful.

edited Apr 23, 2020 at 8:33

Jeroen K

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answered Jun 22, 2010 at 6:07

Darin Dimitrov

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4 Comments

Doug Over a year ago

I was looking for a .Net 3.5 solution - ValidationContext is not available before .Net 4.0

Nate-Wilkins Over a year ago

@Doug might want to put that as a req in the question.

neumann1990 Over a year ago

Unfortunately, this validation doesn't recurse through any complex child objects or collections. The Validator.TryValidateObject(...) just does immediate property and field validations, and calls it a day, as opposed the the validation that happens on model binding in the Controller in MVC world which traverse the entire object graph.

Don Rowe Over a year ago

In my case, the call to TryValidateObject as written only checks the RequiredAttribute. If you'd like to use other validators from System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations like MaxLengthAttribute, add true for the fourth argument (validateAllProperties). See the accepted answer at stackoverflow.com/questions/5368672/…

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