How to handle splitted date fields (year, month, day) in ASP.NET MVC

Question

In need splitted date fields for dob (like the facebook registration form) in my current project. I currently have a working solution but this solutions seems a little bit "dirty".

My solution is a DTO for the splitted date and an editor template for this type.

public class SplittedDate
    {
        public int Day { get; set; }
        public int Month { get; set; }
        public int Year { get; set; }

        public SplittedDate()
            : this(DateTime.Today.Day, DateTime.Today.Month, DateTime.Today.Year)
        {
        }

        public SplittedDate(DateTime date)
            : this(date.Day, date.Month, date.Year)
        {
        }

        public SplittedDate(int day, int month, int year)
        {
            ValidateParams(day, month, year);
            Day = day;
            Month = month;
            Year = year;
        }

        public DateTime AsDateTime()
        {
            ValidateParams(Day, Month, Year);
            return new DateTime(Year, Month, Day);
        }

        private void ValidateParams(int day, int month, int year)
        {
            if (year < 1 || year > 9999)
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("year", "Year must be between 1 and 9999.");
            if (month < 1 || month > 12)
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("month", "Month must be between 1 and 12.");
            if (day < 1 || day > DateTime.DaysInMonth(year, month))
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("day", "Day must be between 1 and max days in month.");
        }
    }

The editor template code:

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<SplittedDate>" %>
<%= Html.TextBox("Day", 0, new { @class = "autocomplete invisible" })%>
<%= Html.TextBox("Month", 0,  new { @class = "autocomplete invisible" })%>
<%= Html.TextBox("Year", 0, new { @class = "autocomplete invisible" })%>

Is there a better, more elegant solution for this kind of problem? Maybe a custom modelbinder thing?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Scott Hansleman wrote about the exact same issue and devised a DateAndTimeModelBinder, blog post here. However it has a touch of write more do less given the amount of code versus what it brings to the party!