How to force MVC to Validate IValidatableObject

Question

It seems that when MVC validates a Model that it runs through the DataAnnotation attributes (like required, or range) first and if any of those fail it skips running the Val

Answer 1

You can manually call Validate() by passing in a new instance of ValidationContext, like so:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(Model model) {
    if (!ModelState.IsValid) {
        var errors = model.Validate(new ValidationContext(model, null, null));
        foreach (var error in errors)                                 
            foreach (var memberName in error.MemberNames)
                ModelState.AddModelError(memberName, error.ErrorMessage);

        return View(post);
    }
}

A caveat of this approach is that in instances where there are no property-level (DataAnnotation) errors, the validation will be run twice. To avoid that, you could add a property to your model, say a boolean Validated, which you set to true in your Validate() method once it runs and then check before manually calling the method in your controller.

So in your controller:

if (!ModelState.IsValid) {
    if (!model.Validated) {
        var validationResults = model.Validate(new ValidationContext(model, null, null));
        foreach (var error in validationResults)
            foreach (var memberName in error.MemberNames)
                ModelState.AddModelError(memberName, error.ErrorMessage);
    }

    return View(post);
}

And in your model:

public bool Validated { get; set; }

public IEnumerable Validate(ValidationContext validationContext) {
    // perform validation

    Validated = true;
}