A Note About Custom Validators for MVC with Sitecore

Sitecore

In a post about creating editable labels in Sitecore from John West, he points out a technique to allow a developer to use annotations within your MVC model to attach “fields” within the context item that would be used to label form fields.

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The same technique can be used to power custom validators with editable error messages.

First, create the class for the attribute:

public class SitecoreRequiredAttribute : RequiredAttribute
{
   // the name of a field within the current item that contains the error message
   public string ErrorMessageFieldName { get; set; }

   // for rendering field values
   private Sitecore.Mvc.Helpers.SitecoreHelper _sitecoreHelper;

   private ID ItemID { get; set; }

   public SitecoreRequiredAttribute(string errorMessageFieldName)
   {
      ErrorMessageFieldName = errorMessageFieldName;
      ItemID = SitecoreHelper.CurrentItem.ID;
   }

   public SitecoreRequiredAttribute()
   {
      ItemID = SitecoreHelper.CurrentItem.ID;
   }

   public override string FormatErrorMessage(string name)
   {
      if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(ErrorMessageFieldName))
      {
         return base.FormatErrorMessage(name);
      }

      Database database = Sitecore.Context.ContentDatabase ?? Sitecore.Context.Database;
      Item item = database.GetItem(ItemID);

      return SitecoreHelper.Field(ErrorMessageFieldName, item).ToString();

   }

   // lazy load sitecoreHelper
   private Sitecore.Mvc.Helpers.SitecoreHelper SitecoreHelper
   {
      get { return _sitecoreHelper ?? (_sitecoreHelper = SitecoreHelperHelper.GetSitecoreHelper()); }
   }

}

(note – the SitecoreHelperHelper refers to John’s code that will fetch the Html Helper item).
				
				
				
				


					
Tags
BrainJocks jockstothecore mvc Sitecore