Why is ValidationSummary(true) displaying an empty summary for property errors?

Question

I am having a slight issue with the use of ValidationSummary(true) to display model level errors. If the ModelState does not contain model errors (i.e. M

Answer 1

I think there is something wrong with the ValidationSummary helper method. You could easily create a custom helper method that wraps the built-in ValidationSummary.

public static MvcHtmlString CustomValidationSummary(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, bool excludePropertyErrors)
{
  var htmlString = htmlHelper.ValidationSummary(excludePropertyErrors);

  if (htmlString != null)
  {
    XElement xEl = XElement.Parse(htmlString.ToHtmlString());

    var lis = xEl.Element("ul").Elements("li");

    if (lis.Count() == 1 && lis.First().Value == "")
      return null;
  }

  return htmlString;
}

Then from your view,

@Html.CustomValidationSummary(true)