Bypass required attribute in ASP.NET MVC

Question

In class I have this :

public class CustomerMvc 
{
    public int Id { get; set; }

    [Required(ErrorMessage = "LastName mandatory.")]
    public string LastName { get; set; }

    [EmailValidation(ErrorMessage = "Email not valid.")]
    public string Email { get; set; }
}

In another class, I have this :

public class CartMvc
{
    public CustomerMvc Customer { get; set; }

    [Required(ErrorMessage = "VAT mandatory.")]
    public int VatId { get; set; }
}

A Save method int the controller, receive a model type CartMvc . The problem is, in this case, I don't want validate the property type CustomerMvc but only VatId .

Is there a way to bypass, in this case, the validation on CustomerMvc ? Other way ?

Thanks,

Answer 1

You could use a view model:

public class SaveCustomerMvcViewModel
{
    public int Id { get; set; }

    public string LastName { get; set; }

    public string Email { get; set; }
}

and then:

public class SaveCartMvcViewModel
{
    public SaveCustomerMvcViewModel Customer { get; set; }

    [Required(ErrorMessage = "VAT mandatory.")]
    public int VatId { get; set; }
}

Now of course your Save controller action will take the appropriate view model as parameter:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Save(SaveCartMvcViewModel model)
{
    ...
}

And as a side remark, putting the [Required] attribute on a non-nullable integer property (your VatId property) hardly makes any sense because a non-nullable integer will always have a value. If you want to validate that the user actually entered some value you'd better use a nullable integer on your view model:

public class SaveCartMvcViewModel
{
    public SaveCustomerMvcViewModel Customer { get; set; }

    [Required(ErrorMessage = "VAT mandatory.")]
    public int? VatId { get; set; }
}