Manually validate Model in Web api controller

Question

I have a class called 'User' and a property 'Name'

public class User
{
    [Required]
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

And api controller method is

public IHttpActionResult PostUser()
{

       User u = new User();
       u.Name = null;

        if (!ModelState.IsValid)
        return BadRequest(ModelState);

        return Ok(u);
}

How do i manually validate the User object so the ModelState.IsValid return false to me?

Answer 1

You can use the Validate() method of the ApiController class to manually validate the model and set the ModelState.

public IHttpActionResult PostUser()
{
    User u = new User();
    u.Name = null;

    this.Validate(u);

    if (!ModelState.IsValid)
        return BadRequest(ModelState);

    return Ok(u);
}