Using ASP.Net MVC Data Annotation outside of MVC

Question

i was wondering if there is a way to use ASP.Net's Data annotation without the MVC site.

My example is that i have a class that once created needs to be validated, or will throw an error. I like the data annotations method, instead of a bunch of if blocks fired by the initaliser.

Is there a way to get this to work?

I thought it would be something like:

• Add data annotations
• Fire a method in the initialiser that calls the MVC validator on the class

any ideas? i must admit i havent added the MVC framework to my project as i was hoping i could just use the data annotations class System.ComponentModel.DataValidation

Answer 1

Here's an example:

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;  public class Foo {     [Required(ErrorMessage = "the Bar is absolutely required :-)")]     public string Bar { get; set; } }  class Program {     public static void Main()     {         var foo = new Foo();         var results = new List<ValidationResult>();         var context = new ValidationContext(foo, null, null);         if (!Validator.TryValidateObject(foo, context, results))         {             foreach (var error in results)             {                 Console.WriteLine(error.ErrorMessage);             }         }     } } 

But quite honestly FluentValidation is much more powerful.