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

@if (ViewContext.ViewData.ModelState.Where(x => x.Key == "").Any())
{
    @Html.ValidationSummary(true, null, new { @class = "ui-state-error" })
}

This checks if there are any model wide errors and only renders the summary when there are some.

Answer 2

ValidationSummary accepts an optional message parameter. If you set this parameter, then the box doesn't look as silly.

@Html.ValidationSummary(true, "Sorry, that didn't work. Please check the details submitted and try again.")

Answer 3

I know this topic is old, but the behavior still exists even in MVC 5. It's definitely not the behavior most of us expect. When we want a "non-property" ModelState error, we do this:

ModelState.AddModelError(string.Empty, ex.Message);

Since we only want to display the summary if the empty key exists, this HtmlHelper does the trick and is cleaner than the accepted answer IMO:

public static MvcHtmlString CustomValidationSummary(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper,
    bool excludePropertyErrors, string message = null)
{
    // Don't render summary if there are no empty keys when excluding property errors
    if (excludePropertyErrors && !htmlHelper.ViewData.ModelState.ContainsKey(string.Empty))
        return null;

    // Use default
    return htmlHelper.ValidationSummary(excludePropertyErrors, message);
}

When excluding property errors, it's likely that you don't need the summary DIV available for client-side validation, so not rendering it at all is fine. I hope this helps some of you.

Answer 4

Check this question too.

You could hide the summary with CSS:

.validation-summary-valid { display:none; }

Also, you could put the validation summary before the Html.BeginForm().

Answer 5

I was having this empty validation summary issue. I just set excludePropertyErrors to false - and it added the errors to the validation summary.

@Html.ValidationSummary(false)

I realise this isn't necessarily what is being asked here - although this does solve the empty validation summary issue - and is an option if you're having this problem.

Answer 6

It's the validation scripts doing this.

Change the following the web.config

<add key="ClientValidationEnabled" value="false" />

It should be false