Client-side validation not working in ASP.NET MVC5 with Bootstrap

Question

Running Visual Studio 2013, I created a new ASP.NET MVC (5) project, with Bootstrap.

However, I'm unable to get unobtrusive client-side validation working.

The model has [Required] attributes on the relevant properties and the view has ValidationMessageFor... tags for each field in the form.

However, submitting the form causes the form to postback to server before validation messages appear.

Using NuGet, I've installed jquery.validate and jquery.validate.unobtrusive and added them to the jquery bundle in App_Start.

Yet it continues to stubbornly post back to server. F12 dev tools shows no JS errors/warnings.

Has anybody else come across this issue (can't see anything in SO relating to MVC 5 specifically) and do you have any ideas?

Answer 1

I had the same problem. Comparing the generated HTML with a site that worked, I noticed that at the end of the document, there was this:

<script src="/bundles/jqueryval"></script> 

...whereas the bundle should have been expanded like this:

<script src="/Scripts/jquery.validate.js"></script> <script src="/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js"></script> 

I looked in App_Start/BundleConfig.cs, and sure enough, the JQuery validation bundle had not been defined in RegisterBundles. I had to add:

bundles.Add(new ScriptBundle("~/bundles/jqueryval").Include(                     "~/Scripts/jquery.validate*")); 

Why this was missing, I don't know. I started with a new, clean project.

It's pretty shoddy that there's no compile-time error when you reference an undefined bundle. Even an always-on run-time error would be better than silent failure. So much time wasted!

EDIT: turns out I didn't have the JQuery validation scripts in my project, either. I had to add them via NuGet ("Microsoft JQuery Unobtrusive Validation").

Answer 2

I was having same problem. The solution is to add .js reference to master page (_Layout.cshtml)

1. jquery.validate.js
2. jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js