Reusing validation attributes in custom ViewModels

Question

Hi,

When I started using xVal for client-side validation, I was only implementing action methods which used domain model objects as a viewmodel or embedded instances of those objects in the viewmodel.

This approach works fine most of the time, but there are cases when the view needs to display and post back only a subset of the model's properties (for example when the user wants to update his password, but not the rest of his profile data).

One (ugly) workaround is to have a hidden input field on the form for each property that is not otherwise present on the form.

Apparently the best practice here is to create a custom viewmodel which only contains properties relevant to the view and populate the viewmodel via Automapper. It's much cleaner since I am only transferring the data relevant to the view, but it's far from perfect since I have to repeat the same validation attributes that are already present on the domain model object.

Ideally I'd like to specify the Domain Model object as a meta class via a MetaData attribute (this is also often referred to as "buddy class"), but that doesn't work since xVal throws when the metadata class has properties that are not present on the viewmodel.

Is there any elegant workaround to this? I've been considering hacking the xVal sourcecode, but perhaps there is some other way I have overlooked so far.

Thanks,

Adrian

Edit: With the arrival of ASP.NET MVC 2, this is not only a problem related to validation attributes anymore, but it also applies to editor and display attributes.

Answer 1

We moved our validation attributes to the ViewModel layer. In our case, this provided a cleaner separation of concerns anyway, as we were then able to design our domain model such that it couldn't get into an invalid state in the first place. For example, Date might be required on a BillingTransaction object. So we don't want to make it Nullable. But on our ViewModel, we might need to expose Nullable such that we can catch the situation where the user didn't enter a value.

In other cases, you might have validation that is specific per page/form, and you'll want to validate based on the command the user is trying to perform, rather than set a bunch of stuff and ask the domain model, "are you valid for trying to do XYZ", where in doing "ABC" those values are valid.

Answer 2

I'm gonna risk the downvotes and state that there is no benefit to ViewModels (in ASP.NET MVC), especially considering the overhead of creating and maintaining them. If the idea is to decouple from the domain, that is indefensible. A UI decoupled from a domain is not a UI for that domain. The UI must depend on the domain, so you're either going to have your Views/Actions coupled to the domain model, or your ViewModel management logic coupled to the domain model. The architecture argument is thus moot.

If the idea is to prevent users from hacking malicious HTTP POSTs that take advantage of ASP.NET MVC's model binding to mutate fields they shouldn't be allowed to change, then A) the domain should enforce this requirement, and B) the actions should provide whitelists of updateable properties to the model binder.

Unless you're domain is exposing something crazy like a live, in-memory object graph instead of entity copies, ViewModels are wasted effort. So to answer your question, keep domain validation in the domain model.

Answer 3

If ViewModels are hypothetically being forced upon you, then I recommend that they only enforce domain-agnostic requirements. This includes things like "username is required" and "email is formatted properly".

If you duplicate validation from the domain models in the view models, then you have tightly coupled the domain to the UI. When the domain validation changes ("can only apply 2 coupon per week" becomes "can only apply 1 coupon per week"), the UI must be updated. Generally speaking, this would be awful, and detrimental to agility.

If you move the validation from the domain models to the UI, you've essentially gutted your domain and placed the responsibility of validation on the UI. A second UI would have to duplicate all the validation, and you have coupled two separate UI's together. Now if the customer wants a special interface to administrate the inventory from their iPhone, the iPhone project needs to replicate all the validation that is also found in the website UI. This would be even more awful than validation duplication described above.

Unless you can predict the future and can rule out these possibilities, only validate domain-agnostic requirements.

Answer 4

I don't know how this will play for client-side validation, but if partial validation is your issue you can modify the DataAnnotationsValidationRunner discussed here to take in an IEnumerable<string> list of property names, as follows:

public static class DataAnnotationsValidationRunner
{
     public static IEnumerable<ErrorInfo> GetErrors(object instance, IEnumerable<string> fieldsToValidate)
     {
           return from prop in TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(instance).Cast<PropertyDescriptor>().Where(p => fieldsToValidate.Contains(p.Name))
                  from attribute in prop.Attributes.OfType<ValidationAttribute>()
                  where !attribute.IsValid(prop.GetValue(instance))
                  select new ErrorInfo(prop.Name, attribute.FormatErrorMessage(string.Empty), instance);
     }
}