How do I use IValidatableObject?

Question

I understand that IValidatableObject is used to validate an object in a way that lets one compare properties against each other.

I\'d still like to have

Answer 1

I liked cocogza's answer except that calling base.IsValid resulted in a stack overflow exception as it would re-enter the IsValid method again and again. So I modified it to be for a specific type of validation, in my case it was for an e-mail address.

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Property)]
class ValidEmailAddressIfTrueAttribute : ValidationAttribute
{
    private readonly string _nameOfBoolProp;

    public ValidEmailAddressIfTrueAttribute(string nameOfBoolProp)
    {
        _nameOfBoolProp = nameOfBoolProp;
    }

    protected override ValidationResult IsValid(object value, ValidationContext validationContext)
    {
        if (validationContext == null)
        {
            return null;
        }

        var property = validationContext.ObjectType.GetProperty(_nameOfBoolProp);
        if (property == null)
        {
            return new ValidationResult($"{_nameOfBoolProp} not found");
        }

        var boolVal = property.GetValue(validationContext.ObjectInstance, null);

        if (boolVal == null || boolVal.GetType() != typeof(bool))
        {
            return new ValidationResult($"{_nameOfBoolProp} not boolean");
        }

        if ((bool)boolVal)
        {
            var attribute = new EmailAddressAttribute {ErrorMessage = $"{value} is not a valid e-mail address."};
            return attribute.GetValidationResult(value, validationContext);
        }
        return null;
    }
}

This works much better! It doesn't crash and produces a nice error message. Hope this helps someone!