How to disable validation in a HttpPost action in ASP.NET MVC 3?

Question

I have a Create-View like this ...

<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")"
        type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")"
        type="text/javascript"></script>

@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    @Html.ValidationSummary(null, new { @class = "validation" })
    ...
    <input class="cancel" type="submit" value="OK" />
    ...
    <input name="submit" type="submit" value="Save" />
}

... and a corresponding controller action:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(string submit, MyViewModel myViewModel)
{
    if (submit != null) // true, if "Save" button has been clicked
    {
        if (ModelState.IsValid)
        {
            // save model data
            return RedirectToAction("Index");
        }
    }
    else // if "OK" button has been clicked
    {
        // Disable somehow validation here so that
        // no validation errors are displayed in ValidationSummary
    }

    // prepare some data in myViewModel ...

    return View(myViewModel); // ... and display page again
}

I have found that I can disable client-side validation by setting class="cancel" on the "OK" button. This works fine.

However, server-side validation still happens. Is there a way to disable it in a controller action (see the else-block in the Create action above)?

Thank you for help!

Answer 1

I recently had a similar problem. I wanted to exclude some properties from validation and used the following code:

ModelState.Remove("Propertyname");

To hide the errormessages you can use

ModelState.Clear();

But the question is why you submit the values if you do not use them? Would you not better use a reset button to reset the values in the form:

<input type="reset" value="Reset Form">