Asp.Net MVC Validation - dependent fields

Question

I'm currently trying to work through MVC validation, and am coming up against some problems where a field is required depending on the value of another field. An example is below (that I haven't figured out yet) - If the PaymentMethod == "Cheque", then the ChequeName should be required, otherwise it can be let through.

[Required(ErrorMessage = "Payment Method must be selected")]
public override string PaymentMethod
{ get; set; }

[Required(ErrorMessage = "ChequeName is required")]
public override string ChequeName
{ get; set; }

I'm using the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations for the [Required], and have also extended a ValidationAttribute to try and get this working, but I can't pass a variable through to do the validation (extension below)

public class JEPaymentDetailRequired : ValidationAttribute 
{
    public string PaymentSelected { get; set; }
    public string PaymentType { get; set; }

    public override bool IsValid(object value)
    {
        if (PaymentSelected != PaymentType)
            return true;
        var stringDetail = (string) value;
        if (stringDetail.Length == 0)
            return false;
        return true;
    }
}

Implementation:

[JEPaymentDetailRequired(PaymentSelected = PaymentMethod, PaymentType = "Cheque", ErrorMessage = "Cheque name must be completed when payment type of cheque")]

Has anyone had experience with this sort of validation? Would it just be better to write it into the controller?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

I would write the validation logic in the model, not the controller. The controller should only handle interaction between the view and the model. Since it's the model that requires validation, I think it's widely regarded as the place for validation logic.

For validation that depends on the value of another property or field, I (unfortunately) don't see how to completely avoid writing some code for that in the model, such as shown in the Wrox ASP.NET MVC book, sort of like:

public bool IsValid
{
  get 
  {
    SetRuleViolations();
    return (RuleViolations.Count == 0); 
  }
}

public void SetRuleViolations()
{
  if (this.PaymentMethod == "Cheque" && String.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ChequeName))
  {
    RuleViolations.Add("Cheque name is required", "ChequeName");
  }
}

Doing all validation declaratively would be great. I'm sure you could make a RequiredDependentAttribute, but that would only handle this one type of logic. Stuff that is even slightly more complex would require yet another pretty specific attribute, etc. which gets crazy quickly.