ASP.NET MVC: Custom Validation by DataAnnotation

Question

I have a Model with 4 properties which are of type string. I know you can validate the length of a single property by using the StringLength annotation. However I want to validate the length of the 4 properties combined.

What is the MVC way to do this with data annotation?

I'm asking this because I'm new to MVC and want to do it the correct way before making my own solution.

Answer 1

You could write a custom validation attribute:

public class CombinedMinLengthAttribute: ValidationAttribute
{
    public CombinedMinLengthAttribute(int minLength, params string[] propertyNames)
    {
        this.PropertyNames = propertyNames;
        this.MinLength = minLength;
    }

    public string[] PropertyNames { get; private set; }
    public int MinLength { get; private set; }

    protected override ValidationResult IsValid(object value, ValidationContext validationContext)
    {
        var properties = this.PropertyNames.Select(validationContext.ObjectType.GetProperty);
        var values = properties.Select(p => p.GetValue(validationContext.ObjectInstance, null)).OfType<string>();
        var totalLength = values.Sum(x => x.Length) + Convert.ToString(value).Length;
        if (totalLength < this.MinLength)
        {
            return new ValidationResult(this.FormatErrorMessage(validationContext.DisplayName));
        }
        return null;
    }
}

and then you might have a view model and decorate one of its properties with it:

public class MyViewModel
{
    [CombinedMinLength(20, "Bar", "Baz", ErrorMessage = "The combined minimum length of the Foo, Bar and Baz properties should be longer than 20")]
    public string Foo { get; set; }
    public string Bar { get; set; }
    public string Baz { get; set; }
}