MIKE

ASP.NET MVC 2 Model Validation With Localization

Mike — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:35:03 +0000

So yesterday I posted about MVC 2 Model Validation. And today I’m going to do the same thing, but I’m going to Localize those ErrorMessage.

In this post I’ll not be using the SetCulture Attribute from ASP.NET MVC And Localization. Instead I’ll be using the auto-culture feature of ASP.NET which will be explained here; note you could achieve the same thing with the SetCulture Attribute.

Obviously, we’ll start by creating a new ASP.NET MVC 2 Web Application. I did not create a Test Project for this…

Then we need to setup proper Globalization configuration in our project. For this we’ll use the Auto-Culture features of ASP.NET. Open up the Web.Config and add this line.


    ....
    
        ....
        
    
    ....

Lets make sure the Globalization works.
First, we'll create the App_GlobalResources folder and add 2 resources files to it; Global.resx and Global.fr.resx. Also add some Resources to this files.


Well also need to make sure that these Resources files do not have Internal properties, but Public properties and also make it an embedded resources. To do this we need to click the Global.resx file, right-blick and go to properties. Set the Build Action to Embedded Resources and the Custom Tool to PublicResXFileCodeGenerator. 

Now we'll change some hard-coded text to Resources. I simply opened up the HomeController and changed the Index action...
public ActionResult Index()
{
    ViewData["Message"] = Resources.Global.Welcome;

    return View();
}

Just try the application and make sure it works properly.


So now we know that our Localization works, but that's not what this post is about is it... What we want is to localize the Error Messages in our Model! So lets make a test model with some validation attributes! 
Notice that I'm not using ErrorMessage anymore, instead I'm using ErrorMessageResourceType and ErrorMessageResourceName.
public class Test
{
    // StringLength
    [StringLength(5, ErrorMessageResourceType = typeof(Global), ErrorMessageResourceName = "StringLength")]
    public string StringLength { get; set; }

    // Required
    [Required(ErrorMessageResourceType = typeof(Global), ErrorMessageResourceName = "Required")]
    public string Required { get; set; }

    // Required and StringLength
    [Required(ErrorMessageResourceType = typeof(Global), ErrorMessageResourceName = "Required")]
    [StringLength(5, ErrorMessageResourceType = typeof(Global), ErrorMessageResourceName = "StringLength")]
    public string Combos { get; set; }

    // Range Attribute
    [Range(1, 31, ErrorMessageResourceType = typeof(Global), ErrorMessageResourceName = "Range")]
    public int Range { get; set; }

    // RegularExpression Attribute
    [RegularExpression(@"^(([A-Za-z0-9]+_+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\-+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\.+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\++))*[A-Za-z0-9]+@((\w+\-+)|(\w+\.))*\w{1,63}\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6}$", ErrorMessageResourceType = typeof(Global), ErrorMessageResourceName = "Email")]
    public string Regex { get; set; }

    // Custom Regular Expression EmailAttribute
    [Email(ErrorMessageResourceType = typeof(Global), ErrorMessageResourceName = "Email")]
    public string Email { get; set; }
}

So that's it for the model, now we need a Controller and a View for that.
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Create()
{
   var t = new Test();
   return View(t);
}

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(Test t)
{
    if (ModelState.IsValid)
    {
        // If it's valid redirect to success page, or in my case the Home page since I have nothing else...
        return Redirect("/");
    }
    return View(t);
}

For the view, just right click on either Create and click Add View...


We don't need to change anything to the view so I'm not going to go into details on this one... Beside I'll post the Source Code when I'm done..
Here's the final result, with my browser set to French.


It's my first strike at this so if you have any comments or suggestion feel free to share it with us in the comment section!
Here's the Source Code

ASP.NET MVC 2 Model Validation

Mike — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:40:59 +0000

In projects I usually work on, we always use a data validation framework. But now in ASP.NET MVC 2 you can do it just as you would using a framework.

You need to write your model with the proper validation attributes.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

namespace FunWithMvc2RC2
{
    public class Test
    {
        // StringLenght
        [StringLength(5, ErrorMessage = "Maximum 25 Characters")]
        public string StringLength { get; set; }

        // Required
        [Required(ErrorMessage = "Required Field")]
        public string Required { get; set; }

        // Required and StringLenght
        [Required(ErrorMessage = "Required Field")]
        [StringLength(5, ErrorMessage = "Maximum 25 Characters")]
        public string Combos { get; set; }

        // Range Attribute
        [Range(1, 31, ErrorMessage = "Minimum 1; Maximum 31")]
        public int Range { get; set; }

        // RegularExpression Attribute
        [RegularExpression(@"^(([A-Za-z0-9]+_+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\-+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\.+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\++))*[A-Za-z0-9]+@((\w+\-+)|(\w+\.))*\w{1,63}\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6}$", ErrorMessage = "Invalid Email Address")]
        public string Regex { get; set; }

        // Custom Regular Expression EmailAttribute
        [Email(ErrorMessage = "Email Validation")]
        public string Email { get; set; }
    }
}

This will give you something like this:

And to make the Email Attribute you simply make a new class, which inherits RegularExpressionAttribute and then send the constructor an Email Address Regex! It’s this simple. You could do the same for any other Regular Expression based validation. Just Make sure you call your class – SomethingAttribute.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

namespace FunWithMvc2RC2
{
    public class EmailAttribute : RegularExpressionAttribute
    {
        public EmailAttribute() :
            base(@"^(([A-Za-z0-9]+_+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\-+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\.+)|([A-Za-z0-9]+\++))*[A-Za-z0-9]+@((\w+\-+)|(\w+\.))*\w{1,63}\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6}$") {}
    }
}

HOW TO: Turn Off Google Buzz

Mike — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:28:13 +0000

If you’re like me and you don’t really like Google Buzz, know that you can easily turn it off by scrolling at the bottom of any page inside GMAIL.

Yeah, it’s that easy…

“Edit WCF Configuration” is missing from Visual Studio 2008 context menu

Mike — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:11:25 +0000

So this morning I format a laptop and install a fresh copy of Visual Studio 2008. I then try to edit the Web.Config using Edit WCF Configuration, but wait it’s missing! What the hell?

So I look around in VS menus and find Tools -> WCF Service Configurator Editor. I clicked it and modified my Web.Config…But I really liked to have the option to just open this in the Context Menu! I clicked again just to humor myself and it was back!

I don’t know what happened there, it’s actually the first time I see this, but I don’t play much with WCF! I was actually able to reproduce this first hand on a virtual machine….

How To: Remove Workspaces from Visual Studio

Mike — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:09:26 +0000

I usually work using Team Foundation Systems over VPN. And sometimes my VPN access is revoked because I no longer work for a particular client, when this happens my Visual Studio Workspaces is stock there, I can’t reuse the same folder. I’ve been looking into this and found a fairly simple solution from Greg.

Open the Command Line ( Start -> Run -> cmd)
Go to: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE (or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE for Visual Studio 2005)
Execute: tf workspaces /remove:workspace

This probably works with Visual Studio 2010, I should update this post whenever I try it!

ASP.Net MVC RSS Feed Action Result

Mike — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:17:35 +0000

ASP.NET MVC ships with a few ActionResult but lacks an RSS Feed ActionResult. I required one for a small project at work, so I started looking on the web if there was something interesting before coding my own. Well the googling was successful! I found a nice piece of code by Guy Burstein.

If you need such an ActionResult in your application, I would recommend you to read his article first!

ASP.NET MVC Extension Methods of UrlHelper

Mike — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:31:08 +0000

I think this is kind of obvious, but I guess it might not be for everyone because I’ve seen some code where people do not use this! URL Helpers are really easy to setup, it takes only a few minutes and will probably save you a lot of massive Search & Replace in the future!

public static string Image(this UrlHelper helper, string fileName)
{
    return helper.Content("~/Content/Images/" + fileName));
}

public static string Stylesheet(this UrlHelper helper, string fileName)
{
    return helper.Content("~/Content/Stylesheets/" + fileName);
}

public static string Script(this UrlHelper helper, string fileName)
{
    return helper.Content("~/Content/Scripts/" + fileName);
}

So instead of doing this:

You can do this:

" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

These are just 3 common examples, you should do the same thing for things you use a lot.

ASP.NET MVC V2 Preview 1 Released!!!

Mike — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:35:18 +0000

The ASP.NET team just released ASP.NET MVC Version 2 Preview 1. You can grab it here.

Scott Guthrie wrote a nice article about it.

How to bypass Windows Live Messenger anti-virus requirement

Mike — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:31:54 +0000

If you don’t use an anti-virus and your friend is trying to send you a file over Windows Live Messenger, you probably noticed that it requires you to have an anti-virus installed or the download will fail. Sure, it’s a good protection I guess, but providing an option to disable that functionality would have been appreciated…

Fortunately, you can bypass this protection quite easily.I made a little C++ .exe that simply returns 0 and exit. Basically, an empty project in Visual Studio! Then you simply assign that .exe as your anti-virus in Windows Live Messenger.

1) Download the app: DoNothing.zip

2) Extract the .exe to a location of your choice (My Documents).

3) Set the anti-virus in Windows Live Messenger:

- Go to Tools > Options > File Transfer
- Check the Scan files for viruses using option
- Click Browse… and select the DoNothing.exe application you extracted.

Windows Live Messenger – File Transfer Options

Enjoy file transfers without an anti-virus

[Read from NGPixel]

Did You Know: “App_Offline.htm” Takes IIS Website Offline

Mike — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:36:10 +0000

Just drop an App_Offline.htm in the root of your website all requests will automatically be redirected to this file! This is neat!

Found it on ScottGu’s and Erik Porter’s blogs