Why can't I reference System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations?

Question

I\'m trying to use DataAnnotations in my WPF project to specify a maximum length of strings, with the following:

using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;         


        

Answer 1

I found that I cannot reference System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations from Silverlight 5 with the below version at (1). I found that Silverlight 5 assemblies cannot use .NET assemblies, it gives the error "You can't add a reference to System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations as it was not built against the Silverlight runtime. ..." I plan to workaround this by hopefully installing the Silverlight 5 package found at (2) below. If this fails I will update this post.

[UPDATE: it failed. I installed everything relating to Silverlight 5 and I don't have the Silverlight version of the .dll assembly System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations . Too bad. UPDATE II: I found an old .dll having this name from a previous installation of Silverlight developer's kit for Visual Studio 2008 or 2010. I added this file and it seems to 'work', in that IntelliSense is now recognizing attributes on class members, such as [Display(Name = "My Property Name")]. Whether or not this works for everything else in this .dll I don't know.]

(1)

Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2013
Version 12.0.21005.1 REL
Microsoft .NET Framework
Version 4.5.51641

Installed Version: Professional

(2) http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=229318