Using DataAnnotations with Entity Framework
- by dcompiled
I have used the Entity Framework with VS2010 to create a simple person class with properties, firstName, lastName, and email. If I want to attach DataAnnotations like as is done in this blog post I have a small problem because my person class is dynamically generated. I could edit the dynamically generated code directly but any time I have to update my model all my validation code would get wiped out.
First instinct was to create a partial class and try to attach annotations but it complains that I'm trying to redefine the property. I'm not sure if you can make property declarations in C# like function declarations in C++. If you could that might be the answer. Here's a snippet of what I tried:
namespace PersonWeb.Models
{
public partial class Person
{
[RegularExpression(@"(\w|\.)+@(\w|\.)+", ErrorMessage = "Email is invalid")]
public string Email { get; set; }
/* ERROR: The type 'Person' already contains a definition for 'Email' */
}
}