Fluent Validation: 'DateTime' does not contain a definition for 'Value'

Question

Trying to make use of Fluent Validation to ensure that a date range is always filled and that the end date does not occur before the beginning date.

I have the first part done correctly, and it fires correctly, but the second part seems to be unimplementable.

My code:

public class Report1ToExcelValidator : AbstractValidator<Report1ToExcelViewModel> {
  public Report1ToExcelValidator() {
    RuleFor(x => x.Report1ToExcelDateFrom)
      .NotEmpty().WithMessage("Please provide a valid beginning date for the range.");
    RuleFor(x => x.Report1ToExcelDateTo)
      .NotEmpty().WithMessage("Please provide a valid end date for the range.")
      .GreaterThan(x => x.Report1ToExcelDateFrom.Value).WithMessage("The Date To must be after the Date From");
  }
}

Where everything gets tripped up is with the .GreaterThan , which reports an error:

'DateTime' does not contain a definition for 'Value' and no extension method 'Value' accepting a first argument of type 'DateTime' could be found

My DateTime is not nullable, both DateTimes require content. When I allow Intellisense to bring up possible options, anything after the field name is restricted to things like .Date and .Hour , which also do not work. .Value does not exist in that list of options, neither does .HasValue .

Really confused on this one.

---

Also, another question: how do I do separate validations on multiple forms that exist on a single page? Right now I have only the one form, but the form's model is being brought in directly. I cannot seem to figure out how to abstract away the form's model so that I can have more than one model on a page. No data is being brought in.

Right now I have just tried to alter the models to:

public class ReportViewModel {
    public Report1ToExcelViewModel Report1ToExcelViewModel { get; set; } 
}

[Validator(typeof(Report1ToExcelValidator))]
public class Report1ToExcelViewModel {
  public Guid? Report1ToExcelRegion { get; set; }
  public DateTime Report1ToExcelDateFrom { get; set; }
  public DateTime Report1ToExcelDateTo { get; set; }
}

with the page referencing @model CCS.Models.ReportViewModel instead of @model CCS.Models.Report1ToExcelViewModel but I cannot seem to get the page to pull in the Report1ToExcelViewModel so that the form fields get recognized. Right now they error out because 'ReportViewModel' does not contain a definition for [fieldname] even though I am bringing the Report1ToExcelViewModel directly into ReportViewModel as above.

Answer 1

Use

.GreaterThan(x => x.Report1ToExcelDateFrom)

in place of

.GreaterThan(x => x.Report1ToExcelDateFrom.Value)

since your model Report1ToExcelDateFrom is not a nullable Datetime

public DateTime ? Report1ToExcelDateFrom { get; set; }

would have worked out perfectly