MVC Validation with Entity Framework - asp.net-mvc

Question

I'm having trouble getting validation to work on my MVC page when using Entity Framework. If someone could point out what I'm doing wrong I would appreciate it. It is definitely seeing the meta data because the labels are working. However, when I hit submit, it just continues on to the next page. Could it have something to do with the fact that I have an instance of a class inside the view model?
Meta Data Class
[MetadataType(typeof(CompanyMetaData))]
public partial class Company
{
}
[MetadataType(typeof(CompanyUserMetaData))]
public partial class CompanyUser
{
}
public class CompanyMetaData
{
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Company Name is required")]
public string Name { get; set; }
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Service Center is required")]
public string ServiceCenterCode { get; set; }
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Account Number is required")]
public string AccountNumber { get; set; }
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Edition is required")]
public string Edition { get; set; }
}
public class CompanyUserMetaData
{
[Required]
[RegularExpression(#"^\w+#[a-zA-Z_]+?\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}$", ErrorMessage = "Invalid Email Address")]
public string EmailAddress { get; set; }
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Password is required")]
public string Password { get; set; }
[Required(ErrorMessage = "First Name is required")]
public string FirstName { get; set; }
[DisplayName("Last Name")]
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Last Name is required")]
public string LastName { get; set; }
}
View Model
public class CreateCompanyViewModel : ILayoutAwareViewModel
{
public List<AdvisorServiceCenterVW> ServiceCenters { get; set; }
public LayoutViewModel LayoutViewModel { get; set; }
public Company newCompany { get; set; }
public CompanyUser newUser { get; set; }
public List<FuneralHome> newFuneralHomes { get; set; }
}
Markup Sample
<div class="form-group">
<label>#Html.LabelFor(d=>d.newUser.LastName)</label>
<div class="controls">
#Html.TextBoxFor(d => d.newUser.LastName, new { #class = "form-control" })
#Html.ValidationMessageFor(d => d.newUser.LastName)
</div>
</div>
Controller
public ActionResult CreateCompanyLocations(CreateCompanyViewModel incomingModel)
{
var model = (CreateCompanyViewModel)TempData["model"];
LayoutViewModel lvm = _layoutHelper.GetLayoutViewModelData("Configure New Company");
model.LayoutViewModel = lvm;
model.newCompany = incomingModel.newCompany;
model.newUser = incomingModel.newUser;
var fhs = _siteService.GetCustomerLocations(model.newCompany.AccountNumber);
model.newFuneralHomes = new List<FuneralHome>();
foreach (var fh in fhs)
{
model.newFuneralHomes.Add(new FuneralHome()
{
Address = fh.Address,
Name = fh.CustomerName,
City = fh.City,
AccountNumber = fh.AccountNumber,
ServiceCenterCode = fh.ServiceCenterCode,
State = fh.State,
ZipCode = fh.ZipCode,
Phone = fh.Phone,
ContactName = fh.ContactName
});
}
TempData["model"] = model;
return View(model);
}

Answer 1

You need to check ModelState.IsValid in your controller code and branch accordingly. Currently your controller is just processing the model whether it is valid or not. The typical pattern looks something like this:
if(ModelState.IsValid)
{
// Do stuff for when model is valid
}
else
{
// return the view with the invalid model to give the user
// a chance to fix it
return View(model);
}

Answer 2

It wound up having nothing to do with the above answer. I was missing the jquery validation and jquery unobtrusive scripts on my layout page so that is what was causing the validation not to fire. You do NOT need to do anything in the controller for this to work correctly.