xVal and the ViewModel pattern - can it be done?

Question

I've been adding xVal to the NerdDinner app - so far so good, I get client-side validation with jQuery.validate in one line, which is truly beautiful. But I can't seem to get xVal to validate a complex object. Say I have a Dinner object that looks like this:

public class Dinner
{
     [Required]
     public string Title { get; set; }
}

and another object, a container:

public class DinnerWrapper
{
     public Dinner Dinner { get; set; }
     public string Name { get; set; }
}

If my controller passes Dinner to the View, I can get xVal to perform client-side validation at the end of my form, like this:

<% using (Html.BeginForm())
       { %>
    <fieldset>
        <p>
            <label for="Title">
                Dinner Title:</label>
            <%= Html.TextBox("Title") %>
            <%= Html.ValidationMessage("Title", "*") %>
        </p>
    </fieldset>
    <% } %>
<%=Html.ClientSideValidation<Dinner>()%>

But I can't get it to work when I am passing DinnerWrapper - xVal doesn't perform client-side validation with the following setup:

<% using (Html.BeginForm())
       { %>
    <fieldset>
        <p>
            <label for="Title">
                Dinner Title:</label>
            <%= Html.TextBox("Title", Model.Dinner.Title) %>
            <%= Html.ValidationMessage("Title", "*") %>
        </p>
    </fieldset>
    <% } %>
<%=Html.ClientSideValidation<DinnerWrapper>()%>

Any ideas? So far I've successfully integrated xVal (and NHaml) into the NerdDinner app, but I seem to have hit a roadblock.

Answer 1

Turns out I didn't have to change the ClientSideValidation line - it works like this:

<%=Html.ClientSideValidation<Dinner>()%>