Where do you put your validation in asp.net mvc 3?

Question

One common recommended practice in asp.net mvc is that you should not send your business models to your views.. instead you should create viewmodels specific to each view.

Answer 1

The MetaData "buddy" class is exactly what this is for. The validation is created once but can be used on both the model and the viewmodel classes:

public class PersonMetaData
{
  [Required] 
  public string Name {get; set;}  

  [Required] 
  public string LastName {get; set;} 
}

[MetadataType(typeof(PersonMetaData))]
public class Person
{
  public string Name {get; set;}  
  public string LastName {get; set;} 
}

[MetadataType(typeof(PersonMetaData))]
public class PersonFormViewModel 
{
  public string Name {get; set;}  
  public string LastName {get; set;} 
}