How to disable field validation on MVC view?

Question

I have an MVC 3 application. I have a model called UserModel that contains an email field, validated for unique with RemoteAttribute. I want to use UserModel on 2 Views - EditU

Answer 1

You can use the partial validation technique to modify the validation results. This example will discard any errors for the Email field.

public class DontValidateEmailAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute {

  public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) {
    var modelState = filterContext.Controller.ViewData.ModelState; 
    var incomingValues = filterContext.Controller.ValueProvider;

    var key = modelState.Keys.Single(x => incomingValues.Equals("Email"));    
    modelState[key].Errors.Clear();

  }
}

and apply this attribute to your Edit Controller.

I learnt this technique from Steve Sanderson's Pro ASP NET MVC 3. He uses the technique to validate a model that has required fields but the data entry is a multistep wizard. If the value has not been returned in the form post, he removes the errors for that property.