Nested Razor layouts causing client validation to fail

Question

Here's my original create page (no nesting) - Client validation works

@model TennisClub.ViewModels.ClubMember.EditorModel
@{
    ViewBag.Title = "New Club Member";
    ViewBag.LegendTitle = "Club Member";
}
<h2>@ViewBag.Title</h2>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    @Html.ValidationSummary(true, "Errors were found on the form. Please correct all errors and try again.")
    <fieldset>
        <legend>@ViewBag.LegendTitle</legend>
        @Html.EditorForModel()
        <p><input type="submit" value="Create" /></p>
    </fieldset>
}
<div>@Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index")</div>

Here's my new Create page (nested) - Client Validation FAILS

@model TennisClub.ViewModels.ClubMember.EditorModel
@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/StandardLayouts/Create.cshtml";
    ViewBag.Title = "New Club Member";
    ViewBag.LegendTitle = "Club Member";
}
@Html.EditorForModel()
@if (ViewBag.CanUserAccessRestrictedContent)

Here's the layout (StandardLayouts/Create.cshtml) used by the above page

@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
}
<h2>@ViewBag.Title</h2>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    @Html.ValidationSummary(true, "Errors were found on the form. Please correct all errors and try again.")
    <fieldset>
        <legend>@ViewBag.LegendTitle</legend>
        @RenderBody()
        <p><input type="submit" value="Create" /></p>
    </fieldset>
}
<div>@Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index")</div>

Discussion

As far as I can tell, everything works fine using the nested approach except for client validation. When I look at the page source, the script references are there (validate and validate.unobtrusive), but no validation attributes are showing up in the html. If I don't use nested layouts, both the script references and the validation attributes are there.

I get the same results whether I use the standard attribute-based validation or FluentValidation.

Questions

1. Is there something incorrect about the way I'm doing the layout nesting? It seems to be working fine except for this one issue, but maybe I'm doing things in a non-standard way.

2. Is there a setting in web.config or somewhere else I need to change to get client validation to work for pages that are nested more than one level deep?

3. Is this a bug in ASP.NET MVC that I should report to Microsoft?

Answer 1

try this for starters: In each view at the top you need to make sure you have a form context available -

@{
if(ViewContext.FormContext == null) {ViewContext.FormContext = new FormContext();
}

I actually put this in my _ViewStart.cshtml because ajax loaded views will require this for validation to work properly at times (plus some other code) - but give it a try for your issue

I believe your issue is if a view does not have a Ajax.BeginForm or an Html.BeginForm in the view itself - then the helpers will not emit the data-val attributes.