Is there any way to ignore some properties (on a POCO) when validating a form in ASP.NET MVC3?

Question

i've got a sign up wizard for new user registration. When I try to goto the 2nd page, I get validation errors because my User object hasn't been fully populated, yet. Is there any way I can tell each ActionMethod to ignore some properties when it checks for the ModelState.IsValid checks?

eg. (Simplified, pseduo code)

public class User {    [Required]    public string Name; // Asked on page 1.    [Required]    public int Age; // Asked on page 1.    [Required]    public string Avatar;  // Asked on Page 2. } 

it complains saying that the Avatar is required/can't be null. But i don't get a chance to ask the user to fill this in, until the next page.

Is it possible to ask to ignore this check, in page 1?

Answer 1

You can use the Bind Attribute for this: http://ittecture.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/tip-of-the-day-199-asp-net-mvc-defining-model-binding-explicitly/

A better option would be to use ViewModels.

http://weblogs.asp.net/shijuvarghese/archive/2010/02/01/view-model-pattern-and-automapper-in-asp-net-mvc-applications.aspx

Answer 2

In the action just remove the errors for the items not yet checked for. This then makes your model valid for the items already checked

foreach (var error in ModelState["Avatar"].Errors)  {       ModelState["Avatar"].Errors.Remove(error);  } 

or

ModelState["Avatar"].Errors.Clear();