ASP.NET MVC: Custom Validation by DataAnnotation

You could write a custom validation attribute:

public class CombinedMinLengthAttribute: ValidationAttribute
{
    public CombinedMinLengthAttribute(int minLength, params string[] propertyNames)
    {
        this.PropertyNames = propertyNames;
        this.MinLength = minLength;
    }

    public string[] PropertyNames { get; private set; }
    public int MinLength { get; private set; }

    protected override ValidationResult IsValid(object value, ValidationContext validationContext)
    {
        var properties = this.PropertyNames.Select(validationContext.ObjectType.GetProperty);
        var values = properties.Select(p => p.GetValue(validationContext.ObjectInstance, null)).OfType<string>();
        var totalLength = values.Sum(x => x.Length) + Convert.ToString(value).Length;
        if (totalLength < this.MinLength)
        {
            return new ValidationResult(this.FormatErrorMessage(validationContext.DisplayName));
        }
        return null;
    }
}

and then you might have a view model and decorate one of its properties with it:

public class MyViewModel
{
    [CombinedMinLength(20, "Bar", "Baz", ErrorMessage = "The combined minimum length of the Foo, Bar and Baz properties should be longer than 20")]
    public string Foo { get; set; }
    public string Bar { get; set; }
    public string Baz { get; set; }
}

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Self validated model

Your model should implement an interface IValidatableObject. Put your validation code in Validate method:

public class MyModel : IValidatableObject
{
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }

    public IEnumerable<ValidationResult> Validate(ValidationContext validationContext)
    {
        if (Title == null)
            yield return new ValidationResult("*", new [] { nameof(Title) });

        if (Description == null)
            yield return new ValidationResult("*", new [] { nameof(Description) });
    }
}

Please notice: this is a server-side validation. It doesn't work on client-side. You validation will be performed only after form submission.

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ExpressiveAnnotations gives you such a possibility:

[Required]
[AssertThat("Length(FieldA) + Length(FieldB) + Length(FieldC) + Length(FieldD) > 50")]
public string FieldA { get; set; }

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To improve Darin's answer, it can be bit shorter:

public class UniqueFileName : ValidationAttribute
{
    private readonly NewsService _newsService = new NewsService();

    public override bool IsValid(object value)
    {
        if (value == null) { return false; }

        var file = (HttpPostedFile) value;

        return _newsService.IsFileNameUnique(file.FileName);
    }
}

Model:

[UniqueFileName(ErrorMessage = "This file name is not unique.")]

Do note that an error message is required, otherwise the error will be empty.

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Background:

Model validations are required for ensuring that the received data we receive is valid and correct so that we can do the further processing with this data. We can validate a model in an action method. The built-in validation attributes are Compare, Range, RegularExpression, Required, StringLength. However we may have scenarios wherein we required validation attributes other than the built-in ones.

Custom Validation Attributes

public class EmployeeModel 
{
    [Required]
    [UniqueEmailAddress]
    public string EmailAddress {get;set;}
    public string FirstName {get;set;}
    public string LastName {get;set;}
    public int OrganizationId {get;set;}
}

To create a custom validation attribute, you will have to derive this class from ValidationAttribute.

public class UniqueEmailAddress : ValidationAttribute
{
    private IEmployeeRepository _employeeRepository;
    [Inject]
    public IEmployeeRepository EmployeeRepository
    {
        get { return _employeeRepository; }
        set
        {
            _employeeRepository = value;
        }
    }
    protected override ValidationResult IsValid(object value,
                        ValidationContext validationContext)
    {
        var model = (EmployeeModel)validationContext.ObjectInstance;
        if(model.Field1 == null){
            return new ValidationResult("Field1 is null");
        }
        if(model.Field2 == null){
            return new ValidationResult("Field2 is null");
        }
        if(model.Field3 == null){
            return new ValidationResult("Field3 is null");
        }
        return ValidationResult.Success;
    }
}

Hope this helps. Cheers !

References

Code Project - Custom Validation Attribute in ASP.NET MVC3

Haacked - ASP.NET MVC 2 Custom Validation

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A bit late to answer, but for who is searching. You can easily do this by using an extra property with the data annotation:

public string foo { get; set; }
public string bar { get; set; }

[MinLength(20, ErrorMessage = "too short")]
public string foobar 
{ 
    get
    {
        return foo + bar;
    }
}

That's all that is too it really. If you really want to display in a specific place the validation error as well, you can add this in your view:

@Html.ValidationMessage("foobar", "your combined text is too short")

doing this in the view can come in handy if you want to do localization.

Hope this helps!

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