MVC3 - passing NEW-LINE to ModelState.AddModelError

Question

When an error occurs on the back-end, the MVC controller returns a message via the
ModelState.AddModelError(\"\", \"message\");

I would like to ha

Answer 1

The ValidationSummary helper HTML encodes error messages and this is by design. It means that you cannot use HTML tags as they will be encoded. So you could write a custom helper which doesn't encode:

public static class ValidationExtensions
{
    public static IHtmlString MyValidationSummary(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper)
    {
        var formContextForClientValidation = htmlHelper.ViewContext.ClientValidationEnabled ? htmlHelper.ViewContext.FormContext : null;
        if (htmlHelper.ViewData.ModelState.IsValid)
        {
            if (formContextForClientValidation == null)
            {
                return null;
            }
            if (htmlHelper.ViewContext.UnobtrusiveJavaScriptEnabled)
            {
                return null;
            }
        }

        var stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
        var ulBuilder = new TagBuilder("ul");

        ModelState modelState;
        if (htmlHelper.ViewData.ModelState.TryGetValue(htmlHelper.ViewData.TemplateInfo.HtmlFieldPrefix, out modelState))
        {
            foreach (ModelError error in modelState.Errors)
            {
                string userErrorMessageOrDefault = error.ErrorMessage;
                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(userErrorMessageOrDefault))
                {
                    var liBuilder = new TagBuilder("li");
                    liBuilder.InnerHtml = userErrorMessageOrDefault;
                    stringBuilder.AppendLine(liBuilder.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal));
                }
            }
        }

        if (stringBuilder.Length == 0)
        {
            stringBuilder.AppendLine("
");
        }
        ulBuilder.InnerHtml = stringBuilder.ToString();

        TagBuilder divBuilder = new TagBuilder("div");
        divBuilder.AddCssClass(htmlHelper.ViewData.ModelState.IsValid ? HtmlHelper.ValidationSummaryValidCssClassName : HtmlHelper.ValidationSummaryCssClassName);
        divBuilder.InnerHtml = ulBuilder.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal);
        if (formContextForClientValidation != null)
        {
            if (!htmlHelper.ViewContext.UnobtrusiveJavaScriptEnabled)
            {
                divBuilder.GenerateId("validationSummary");
                formContextForClientValidation.ValidationSummaryId = divBuilder.Attributes["id"];
                formContextForClientValidation.ReplaceValidationSummary = false;
            }
        }
        return new HtmlString(divBuilder.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal));
    }
}

and then:

@Html.MyValidationSummary()

It is the following line in our custom helper which explicitly doesn't HTML encode:

liBuilder.InnerHtml = userErrorMessageOrDefault;

In the original helper it looks like this:

liBuilder.SetInnerText(userErrorMessageOrDefault);