Is model binding possible without mvc?

Question

Say I have a Dictionary and I want to update an object with the values from the dictionary, just like model binding in MVC... how would yo

Answer 1

You could use the DefaultModelBinder to achieve this but you will need to reference the System.Web.Mvc assembly to your project. Here's an example:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web.Mvc;

public class MyViewModel
{
    [Required]
    public string Foo { get; set; }

    public Bar Bar { get; set; }
}

public class Bar
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
}


public class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var dic = new Dictionary
        {
            { "foo", "" }, // explicitly left empty to show a model error
            { "bar.id", "123" },
        };

        var modelState = new ModelStateDictionary();
        var model = new MyViewModel();
        if (!TryUpdateModel(model, dic, modelState))
        {
            var errors = modelState
                .Where(x => x.Value.Errors.Count > 0)
                .SelectMany(x => x.Value.Errors)
                .Select(x => x.ErrorMessage);
            Console.WriteLine(string.Join(Environment.NewLine, errors));
        }
        else
        {
            Console.WriteLine("the model was successfully bound");
            // you could use the model instance here, all the properties
            // will be bound from the dictionary
        }
    }

    public static bool TryUpdateModel(TModel model, IDictionary values, ModelStateDictionary modelState) where TModel : class
    {
        var binder = new DefaultModelBinder();
        var vp = new DictionaryValueProvider