Add a Dropdown Filter

/ ASP.NET, Entity Framework / , , ,

On my contacts application I wanted the option to only show contacts from a specific city. To accomplish this I am going to use a dropdown with a distinct list of cities that exist in my contact list.

Below is part of the existing contacts controller with the Index action that gets all contacts and returns a view.

public class ContactsController : Controller
{
    private ContactDbContext db = new ContactDbContext();

    // GET: Contacts
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        var contacts = from c in db.Contacts
                       select c;
        return View(contacts);
    }
}

Using ContactDbContext, which is a entity framework DbContext for contacts, the database will be queried for a list of distinct cities. The list of distinct cities is then stored as a select list in the view bag.

var cityList = new List<string>();
var cityDistinct = from c in db.Contacts
                   orderby c.City
                   select c.City;

cityList.AddRange(cityDistinct.Distinct());
ViewBag.city = new SelectList(cityList);

ViewBag is a dynamic object and is one way to pass data from a controller to a view. A dynamic object basically allows you to add properties just by setting them. In the above example the with ViewBag.city is adding a city property to the ViewBag and setting it equal to a new SelectList.

The resulting index action now takes a city parameter which is used when querying for contact if it has a value.

public ActionResult Index(string city)
{
    var cityList = new List<string>();
    var cityDistinct = from c in db.Contacts
                       orderby c.City
                       select c.City;

    cityList.AddRange(cityDistinct.Distinct());
    ViewBag.city = new SelectList(cityList);

    var contacts = from c in db.Contacts
                   select c;

    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(city))
    {
        contacts = contacts.Where(c => c.City == city);
    }

    return View(contacts);
}

In my razor view the following adds the new city filter to the UI.

@using (Html.BeginForm("Index", "Contacts", FormMethod.Get))
{
<p>
    City: @Html.DropDownList("city", 
                             ViewBag.city as SelectList, 
                             "All", 
                             new {@class = "city", 
                                  onchange = "this.form.submit();"})
</p>
}

“All” is the label used for the default empty item. The last bit is for HTML attributes and set the class for the drop down to “city” and makes it so the form submits on change of the drop down. This means that when a new city is selected the view will refresh and only show contacts for the newly selected city.

This is the resulting UI:CityFilterUi

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Multi-property Custom Validation Attributes

/ Validation /

I am going to expand on last week’s Simple Custom Validation Attributes with custom validation attributes that need to look at more than a single property of a model. Again using the contact application example, lets say that if a contact has a country of USA then state and zip code are required.

As before we have class which inherits from ValidationAttribute. IsValid is still overridden, but it is a different overload than the previous example that provides access to the ValidationContext, which in our case is the contact model that is being validated.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
using System.Linq;
using System.Reflection;

public class ValidCountryRequired : ValidationAttribute
{
    private readonly string _countryProperty;
    private readonly string[] _requriedByCountries;

    public ValidCountryRequired(string countryProperty,
                                string[] requriedByCountries)
    {
        _countryProperty = countryProperty;
        _requriedByCountries = requriedByCountries;
    }

    protected override ValidationResult IsValid(object value,
                                                ValidationContext context)
    {
        PropertyInfo propertyInfo;
        propertyInfo = context.ObjectType.GetProperty(_countryProperty);
        if (propertyInfo == null)
        {
            return new ValidationResult(_countryProperty +
                                        " does not exist");
        }

        var country = propertyInfo.GetValue(context.ObjectInstance, null);

        if (_requriedByCountries.Contains(country.ToString()) &&
            (value == null ||
             String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value.ToString())))
        {
            return new ValidationResult(context.DisplayName +
                                        " is requried for contacts from " +
                                        country);
        }

        return null;
    }
}

For this example I have added a constructor that takes the name of the country property in the model being validated and a string array of the countries that need to make sure the state and zip code are filled in. Both parameters are stored in class level variables for use in the IsValid function.

The IsValid function is still where all the work takes place. The overload of IsValid we are working with provides the value of the property being validated and the validation context that validation is running for. The validation context will allow us to access other properties on the model being validated.

The first step to checking a different property than the one being validated is to get the property info from the validation context by using context.ObjectType.GetProperty and passing the property name that was passed in via the constructor. If GetProperty returns null then the context did not contain the property that was expected. In this case a new ValidationResult is returned with a message that the expected country property was not found.

Using the property info for the country property we can call GetValue with context.ObjectInstance to get the contact’s country. If that country is found in the string array of countries that require the property being validated then a check is run to make sure the property has a value and is not blank.

If the property does not have a value then a new ValidationResult is returned with an error message. If the property does have a value then null is returned indicating that the property is valid.

Example usage from my contact model:

[ValidCountryRequired("Country", new[] { "USA" })]
public string State { get; set; }
[Display(Name = "Zip Code")]
[ValidCountryRequired("Country", new[] { "USA" })]
public string ZipCode { get; set; }

One other thing to note is the usage of context.DisplayName when creating the ValidationResult. By using display name in the message the ZipCode property will show as “Zip Code” in the message returned.

Multi-property Custom Validation Attributes Read More »

Simple Custom Validation Attributes

/ Validation /

Last week I did an overview of  Data Annotations. This week I am going to expand on data annotations by giving an example of a very simple custom validation attribute.

Sticking with my contact application theme lets say that I only wanted to allow contacts from a very small list of countries. The .Net framework does not have a built in validation attribute to cover this scenario which means I would need to create my own custom validation attribute to fill this need.

To create a custom validation attribute all you need is a class that inherits from ValidationAttribute and overrides the IsValid function.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

public class ValidCountry : ValidationAttribute
{
    private readonly List<string> validCountries = new List<string>
    {
        "USA",
        "Canada",
        "Mexico"
    }; 

    public override bool IsValid(object value)
    {
        return value != null &&
               !validCountries.Contains((string)value);
    }
}

When validation for a property is performed the IsValid function of all the property’s validation attributes are run. The IsValid function is called with the value of the property being validated which will have to be cast to the type needed for validation. In my country example value is being cast to string and used see if the value is found in a list of valid countries.

Any property with the ValidCountry attribute would not validate unless the property was set to USA, Canada or Mexico. This is a contrived example, but it does give you an idea of how easy it is to add your own custom validation attributes.

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Data Annotations

/ Validation / , ,

Validation via data annotations in .NET is a great feature that is simple to implement. Here is an example model class that is using data annotations.

using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

namespace Contacts.Models
{
    public class Contact
    {
        [Required]
        [StringLength(50, MinimumLength = 4)]
        public string Name { get; set; }
        [StringLength(2)]
        public string State { get; set; }
        [Display(Name = "Zip Code")]
        [StringLength(10)]
        public string ZipCode { get; set; }
    }
}

First step in using data annotations is to add a using statement for the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace. This namespace allows you to add validation attributes to the properties that require validation and contains helper classes to run validate on attributed models.

In the example above Required, StringLength and Display are all validation attributes. For the most part the attributes are self-explanatory, but be aware most attributes also have options to give you more control of the validation. For example required attribute has an AllowEmptyStrings property that if set to true will allow an empty string to pass validation. String length is another example which has options for minimum and maximum lengths for the property being validated.

This is just a small sample of the built-in attributes that exist. Other built-in attributes range  from credit card and email address validation to file extension and range validation. If a built-in validation does not meet your needs then a custom attribute a can be created by deriving from ValidationAttribue.

MVC has a lot of great functionality built around data annotations. For instance as long as a client has JavaScript turned a form will not allow submission until the model passes all the validation conditions. On the server-side inside of a controller to run validation all it takes is to run ModelState.IsValid.

With winforms the story is not quite as simple, but still pretty straight forward. The following is a simple example of calling validation on a model.

private void ValidationExample()
{
    var contact = new Contact { Name = "Bob", State = "TN" };

    var context = new ValidationContext(contact);
    var errors = new List<ValidationResult>();

    if (!Validator.TryValidateObject(contact, context, errors))
    {
        foreach (ValidationResult result in errors)
        {
            //act on error
        }
    }
}

Validator.TryValidateObject takes the model to be validated, a validation context (created with the model to validate) and an empty list of type ValidationResult. The function call returns false if any properties fail validation. In the example above the validation would fail since name only contains three characters the minimum length is set to four characters.

Data Annotations Read More »