ASP MVC 2 Data Annotations not working with VS2008/ASP 3.5?

Question

I have added data annotations to a 'buddy' class as referenced in MS guidance. In particular, the [DisplayName ("Name")] does not seem to be affecting anything. My understanding is that the value assigned to the annotation should be referenced and used by the Html.LabelFor(m => m.Attribute) helper to display the label for the field.

Am I wrong on this?

I noticed in the view data class there is a strong-type view called EntityName+EntityName_Validation. Does that pull in additional components needed?

I tried creating a view using one of those types and there is no scaffolding present in the resulting view. Perhaps that is a different topic altogether. The UIHint doesn't seem to have any impact either.

As mentioned, this is ASP.NET 3.5 code, in VS2008. I am using Linq to SQL. Perhaps this disqualifies the full use of data annotations too.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

    namespace Sample.Models {

        [MetadataType (typeof (SampleRequest_Validation))]
        public partial class SampleRequest {

            public class SampleRequest_Validation {

                [DisplayName ("Description of Project:")]
                [Required (ErrorMessage = "Project description is required.")]
                [StringLength (500, ErrorMessage = "Project description cannot exceed 500 characters.")]
                [UIHint ("TextArea")]
                string ProjectDescription {get; set;}

I suspect I am missing some reference somewhere...

Thanks!

Answer 1

Okay, there was something missing...

I didn't declare the class attibutes as public, so of course the data annotations failed.

The last lisne from the code snippet above should read:

public string ProjectDescription {get; set;}

The smallest things...